The Other Side

by MagnoliaThourns

First published 19th of March, 2018

A river in the Everfree, impossible to cross, is calling Twilight to the opposite bank. Zecora finds her there and trains her in Zebrican magic to get her across. As they work, as the river beckons to Twilight's very bones, new feelings bloom.

Every night, Twilight Sparkle sleepwalks to the shore of a river in the Everfree. She knows she needs to get to the opposite side, but flying, teleporting, and canoeing have all failed. When Zecora finds her there one night, she offers to train her in Zebrican magic to get her across.

Together, Twilight and Zecora discover themselves and each other. And as their relationship deepens, the river beckons to Twilight ever more, calling to her flesh, destiny pulling at the marrow.

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This is a story of coming-of-age for alicorns, of discovering love even as life seems to dissolve into the air around you, of making peace with your purpose and rebuilding confidence; a story about zebras and Equestria as a whole, about peace and exploration.

[This is a Twicora story. The perspective is experimental; "I" is Twilight Sparkle and "you" is Zecora.
The teen rating is for some language and thematic elements, one mention of masturbation, a conversation about suicide, and excessive cuddling.]

Inspired by both this and this. Source for the cover art is here.

Ch.1 - The Thin Place

Author's Notes:

The perspective here is experimental, the "I" pronoun refers to Twilight Sparkle and the "you" pronoun refers to Zecora. You see this perspective in songs and written letters, but I haven't seen a story written out with it. I tried it out and liked the sense of intimacy it created for me, so I kept it. I hope it is not confusing to read; if it helps, imagine that this is all one giant letter addressed to Zecora from Twilight (then the pronouns would fall into place naturally). Thanks for starting the story!

We’ve been writing to each other for months now. It’s fun having someone to write letters too, especially since I don’t write to Celestia like I used to. And we’ve learned a lot about each other, finding common ground in my interest in learning anything and your prowess with potion making. You even mailed me supplies to mix my own ink—not any kind of magic ink, just iron-gall. Making black pigment from two relatively colorless sources was pretty fun, and I keep a jar of crushed oak galls fermenting on the balcony off my room now. I haven’t needed to buy ink since. It surprised me more than I’d like to admit at how much chemistry you know, but it makes sense that it goes hand and hand with potion making.

I like how you write all of your letters as poetry. How you’ve branched out from rhyming couplets into everything from sonnets to freeform verse. The haikus I’ve sent back to you made you laugh, I’m sure. I’m good at writing technical papers and essays, but poetry is so out of my depth I can really only appreciate it from the outside.

A few weeks ago, in one of our letters, you mentioned in passing that you felt lonely sometimes. I never addressed it directly because there were more pressing things in that letter—like the jaguar you’d found eviscerated at your doorstep—but I still think it over sometimes. It was such a small thing, and I don’t know how to bring it up casually.

I toss and turn some more, thoughts of you and what I’ll write in my next letter crowding into my mind. It’s been too long to bring back up how you feel, and I’m not sure what I would even say. So it’s just one of the things that kicks around my head at night while I’m trying to sleep, just another thing that we have in common, recently at least. With this mess that’s started up a few moths ago, I feel more alone than I know have a right to. I throw another pillow off my bed in frustration and slam my wings out of the covers. Nope.

Sleeping spells are easy to get addicted to so I don’t want to use them too often. I roll over on my back and put my hooves in the air. Besides, they’ve always creeped me out with how I can feel myself casting magic as I loose conciousness. The final bits of the spell have to knit themselves together correctly while you’re asleep or else who knows what could happen. The crystal ceiling of the crystal library is high above me. Too high. As much as I hate to admit it, I still miss my old Golden Oaks. And I miss not having separate rooms with Spike. But oh well.

Eventually, sleep comes to me like Luna spreading her sympathy.

In my dream I’m moving through an odd version of town. The rooftops reach to the sky unthatched and open; dragons, buffalo, you and other zebras, deer, donkeys all trot in the streets; and I’m missing a foreleg. Underneath it all I can feel it. Even in my dream, I can feel myself walking in the middle of the night. As the end of the street approaches, I know suddenly that I’m about to wake up. And I’ll be—

I open my eyes and sure enough, I’m standing with two hooves in the water of the river. Way out in the Everfree Forest. “Uuuuggh!” I yell in frustration, sure that nopony’s around to see or hear me. “I don’t care about this stupid river! Why am I here?”

For a few months this has been going on. I look back over the river. The other side remains a mystery, but I know that’s where I’m supposed to be. Everything past a few meters out is all obscured by fog a fog that eats every spell I throw at it. Nothing works. In frustration I even made a canoe last time I was here, but it did the same thing as flying. I rowed deeper and deeper into the mist in my hollowed-out log until I finally decided I had to turn around before exhaustion collapsed my muscles into jelly, and when I did the river bank I had started on waited only a few oar strokes away, a few wingbeats away.

I sink back into the mucky shore and stare at it in the half-light. It’s beautiful, I know, but I still hate it. Glittering all smugly with every crisp vibration of the water, casting rays of errant moonlight into the fog. And behind my purple butt hungers the dark muddy forest filled with gnarled trees grasping for the clouds, pinpricks of dim glints staring intently. A bird screeches in the distance, cutting through the rustling and my restlessness. I swish my tail anxiously and teleport home.

Settled into bed again, I stare at the wall in the dark, passing in and out of a shallow daze, never fully unaware of the bed pressing into my side and the pillow I cuddle. Eventually my alarm clock rings.

The day goes by in a happier blur. I’m burnt out at breakfast, but Spike is kind and makes eggs. Starlight goes off to meet Sunburst at the train station, while I get to stay behind. Which is nice, and calming, and I draft my next letter to you before picking up some books and running my hooves through their pages for hours in an attempt to finally finish them.

Pinkie Pie comes by later, she’s always fun to see. Rainbow Dash visits too, in need of the next book from A Series of Hapless Happenings. And all too soon, night falls into the atmosphere again.

“I wish I could stay up forever,” I mumble to Spike as he brushes his teeth and I sit with my neck peeking out of the bathwater.

“I bet you could,” he says, spitting, then looking over at me, “I’m sure you’ve got some kind of spell for that, right?”

He’s smiling too much for me, so I turn away and use my magic to pull a rope of water out of the tub and douse my mane. “Yeah, but those have side effects.”

“Well, you could always ask Pinkie how she does it.”

“And go through another Pinkie sense debacle? No thanks, Spike.”

He finishes brushing, and hops off the stool. “Well, it’s just a thought. Now, I gotta read the latest issue of Spiderpony before I finally beat Starlight at chess. Goodnight, Twilight.”

“Goodnight, Spike.”

He closes the door, and I’m all alone in the steamy bathroom. The purple crystal walls sweat lightly with condensation, throwing little pricks of golden light from the lantern into the air. The water is foamy and clouded from dirt and soap. I dunk my head under, fluff my wings in the suds for a moment, and try to imagine, holding my breath with my eyes closed, that I’m in the river. That the water is hot with my destiny, and the other side is coming up just ahead of me…

But I need air eventually, and when I come up to breathe deep breaths, it’s just the quiet bathroom again and the big bathtub is as still as usual. I finish washing as slowly as I can.

Starlight stops me in the hall as I’m walking back to my room.

“Hey, Twilight, sorry, Spike said it was okay but I just wanted to make sure. We can use that room, um, the one...” She points far down the hall, and I realize she’s trying to say the left wing common room.

“I know the one.”

“Oh, great! Anyway, we can use that for our sleepover, right?”

I shake my head but the fog inside stays. It had completely slipped away from me that Sunburst was staying here while he was in Ponyville. “Yeah, of course! Is Spike staying with you?”

“Yep, I invited him along. And, um, I was wondering too, if you wanted to come?”

Shoot. “Oh, uh, well,” I can tell she’s nervous. I want to be supportive, but I already feel in my tendons that I’m going to be sleepwalking again tonight, and I don’t want her to know that. I don’t want anyone to know it. “I’m pretty tired tonight, but he’s staying for a while, right? I’ll come join you guys tomorrow.”

“Okay, well, thanks Twilight!”

“Don’t mention it. Have a good night, Starlight, and don’t let Spike keep you up too long.”

She smiles a little too big and waves as she walks down the long hallway.

I wake up at the bank of the river again. It’s too much. The bitterness of it all wells into my mouth and I sit down in the slurry of mud to just cry it out. But there’s nothing to come, and all the tiredness accumulated in me from sleeping so bad for so long holds only dry humor about it all. My barren tear ducts fill me suddenly with rage; I jump up on all fours and scream, “Fuck you too, river!”

“Is that you, Twilight? Such vulgarity, could I be right?”

Your voice about makes me jump out of my skin, but you’re unperturbed. The gold rings you wear around your neck and your leg, the earings too, are gone. You look even more beautiful naked than in your jewelry, I notice in the back of my mind. The lack of gold also makes you looks smaller. “Zecora! Oh, I was—this is—I was just…” Shame and embarrassment warm up my face. As if you’ve caught me writing my Starswirl fanfiction or something.

You motion for me to come to you, and I do. You put a hoof on my neck and hug me tight, and it feels like the closest thing to home in a long time. I can’t help but notice how warm your neck is pressed against mine.

“It’s not safe to talk out here, come to my hut, poor dear.”

“Thanks Zecora. It’s nice to see you in pony again. I like your neck.”

You smile at me. My face cools a bit, but all that energy redirects to knot my stomach up. It doesn’t help that I realize how stupid the phrase “I like your neck” must sound, even if you understand what I meant.

Ch.2 - Sturdy Stripes

The path to your hut is spooky, but through it all I’m right behind you. In the dark under the canopy, I light my horn to see the way. I need it just so I don’t face-plant into your stripped, limber ass, but you move with some kind of experience beyond me. Not as if you’ve travelled this way before, or seen these specific heaps of decaying foliage hiding these specific patterns of tangled roots, but as if you are sure, with every step you take, that you’re safe. From falling, being hit, tripping, getting eaten, whatever. It’s oddly familiar, that bold gracefulness. You keep moving smoothly and—for my sake—slowly.

We reach your hut, and you let me in. You put a pot on the fire and tell me you’ll make some tea. “So,” you say, settling down onto a cushion on the floor opposite mine. “You were sleepwalking to the river, before I gathered you hither. What is your experience with this, would you tell me, miss?”

I sigh and you look on patiently. Your house has changed over the years, but it still feels the same. The Zebrican artifacts, the wooden everything. Empty eyes peering from emotional wooden masks. Potions upon potions covering the shelves of the walls, in dusky vials and bright pots. Roots and flowers hang upside down, drying in a corner; clear glass jars with pickled oddities—including the better half of a jaguar—sit below them. The air smells homely and alive; from the forest and from you. Only half the lanterns are lit; the shadows in the corners pull us into an intimate closeness. I look down to the table we’re sat around, a cross section hewn from a species I can’t immediately identify, and try to pull the story from the beginning. “Well, I’ve been sleepwalking for a while now. It started when—let me think—it was just a month or so after I defeated Tirek. I’ve tried to stop it but one way or another, I end up by that river. And I’ve tried to cross it, at night, and I’ve come here in the day and tried, and whatever magic is over it all, it just won’t let me get to the other side. And I don’t even know what’s on the other side, I don’t know why any of this is happening!”

You lean forward a bit and nod sincerely. Sometimes I forget how much I like you. Zebras are just so cool on their own, and you’re even cooler. “Have you asked for assistance, or to that idea do you feel resistance?”

I look back down at the rings in the wood. “I, uh, I haven’t told anyone. It all just feels so. I don’t know. Silly? Immature? And at any rate, I’m a princess, I should be able to handle this. Why am I not better than this? I’m already embarrassed that you found out.”

“Oh Twilight, you forget so soon, your friends are nothing but a boon. Who has been at your side always, and what lesson did you learn in those days?”

“That my friends are there for me, and I should accept help. I know, I should. I probably should’ve told you too—it started before we became penpals, but it is in the Everfree. I thought about it, but, it’s just…. It shouldn’t be happening in the first place. I should be able to deal with this myself.” You get up and pour the tea. The cup you hand me is already warm through the thick sides. “Thanks.”

“This feels too personal, doesn’t it? And your friends you would like to forget?”

“Yes, sort of. I just don’t want them to be a part of this… I don’t want them to see me like this I guess.”

“And the other side, what do you think it does hide?”

“I… I don’t know. Maybe.” I look out the window, and your face enters my periphery. The moon is there, shining through. I notice you look more intently, at my jawline and neck as I swallow, at my eyes as I stare. “I don’t know what’s on the other side, but I know it’s something I’ve lost. And I just hope to Celestia it doesn’t take the rest of my life to get to it back.”

You stand, and start gathering odd things around your hut. I stay still and wait. “That river, Twilight, must be the River of Dreams. It is calling, beckoning to you, it seems. I have heard of a strange river in legend and song, given many names but this title has been kept for long. And on the other side, is something taken out of your soul; something that has left you less than whole. And there may be more, it is hard to define for sure.”

“What? How could I loose something out of my soul?” I’m standing now, and you’ve put several things into a white pot which you put into a furnace in the corner to cook.

“ I do not know. But it has left and you can clearly see, you need it back; so craves your body.”

“Well, well, okay, so what do I do? How do I get this sacred thing back?”

You put your hoof on my withers. “You must reach the other side as fast as you can; I have already conceived of a plan.”

“What is it?”

“I could train you. Would you like to?”

“Train for what? Swimming?”

You shake your head, and stare into the thing in the fire. “Zebrican magic can influence the Everfree woods; I will teach what I think will help us reclaim your lost goods.”

“Thank you. I would love that.” I follow your eyes to the white thing in the furnace, and it clicks in my head. “Oh, hey, is that your new zirconia crucible?”

You smile and nod. “Yes, it finally arrived in the mail, and it has yet to falter or fail. It is much more magically pure than graphite; it’s preservation of an ingredient’s essence is a delight.”

I smile and, through the ceramic window in the furnace door, watch streams of flame plume from vent holes in the top of the lid; the volatile organics gassing and burning off as what’s inside bakes into charcoal. I still feel a bit awkward, seeing you in person after so long of mostly just writing. But little things like this help take some of that off; not too long ago you wrote about how you broke your old crucible and decided to splurge on an upgrade.

“It is very late, would you feel right sleeping at my house tonight? It is your decision, but in the morning we could start our vision.”

“Oh, um, it’s a very kind offer, but, I probably need to be there for Starlight and Sunburst in the morning.”

“What about Spike, this responsibility he wouldn’t like?”

“Well, he does like being more a part of stuff. Maybe I’ll send him a message.” And after a night of bonding together, it might be nice to just continue being together. I could just teleport, but I am tired, and if I teleported into my room I’d wake everyone up. I could teleport outside, but I might wake them up by sneaking back in and walking through the castle. I do want to get started with whatever it is we’ll be doing. A line from Slumber 101 about seizing opportunity pops into my head and convinces me. “Oh, whatever, I’ll stay if it’s not too much trouble.”

“Never too much to be; come into bed with me.”

You climb in your bed, and pull back the covers for me. I crawl in next to you as you blow the lamp out. We face eachother in the blind dark; my eyes not acclimated enough yet to make out what your face is. Everything feels weird. You reach out one hoof and gently touch it to mine. I rub it a bit to acknowledge you.

And you’re asleep in moments. All too soon. I can’t get used to the new smells of the cabin, the odd, if comfortable, feel of the down-feather mattress, the erratic yips from the Everfree just beyond the walls. So I focus on your breathing, slow and even. It helps calm me down, and so does being away from everything for a moment. I squirm up closer to you and dip my muzzle down into your outstretched legs, smelling your homemade soap among your warm fur. Those were some good letters; you wrote about using lanolin and castor oil, about adding myrr and ginger and black pepper essential oils, about having to rebuild your soap mold. I want to breathe it in for hours.

Just before I finally fall asleep, I feel you push closer and pull your neck up along the bed, so you’re almost cradling me through the night.

I wake up at the shore of the river again. I almost start cussing it out, before you lay a foreleg across my withers.

“We’ll begin your training now. You can cross the river; I’ll tell you how.”

“Please do—I’ve done everything I can at this point.”

“Your methods of conventional travel have failed, but one magic here might yet prevail.” You step toward the river. Before I can say anything, you put one hoof on the water.

It holds you there. I have no idea how, but it does, and it keeps you on the surface as you move a few paces out. Then you turn your face back at me to smile, and I admit the impossibility of crossing seems to soften a little.

“You will walk across, without any more loss.”

“So…” I stare into the water’s shore. It isn’t quite morning yet, but the sky is beginning to catch into indigo. The image of Luna lowering the moon for Celestia flashes into my head, though I don’t know why. I ask you, “Do I just step out?”

“Faith, you must hold in heart, for the water to do its part. Focus your energy to the ends of your stance, and let your mind go blank as in a trance. Then step forward with assuredness, and the water will lend it’s sturdiness..”

“Okay.” It’s not going to be easy, and you know that. But I trust you, so I put one hoof out, close my eyes, try to stop thinking and believe the surface will hold, and bring it down.

And sink right into the mucky water with a splash. You say, “It seems we will have work after all, come, let’s start rolling the ball.”

I pull my hoof out of the mud, and follow you back towards your hut. It has a pond behind it, where you helped me practice focus before, when I had to fight Trixie. It excites me to see you in your element again; we never wrote to eachother about your meditation or your magic much so it’ll be nice to see it again.

Before we go to the pond, you dart inside and come back out with the crucible from last night and a small mortar and pestle. You pour out the contents of the jar into the mortar. I can recognize the shapes of unfamiliar plants, black and falling into it with a sound almost like styrofoam. You grind them up together and dip a hoof into the resulting dry dust of ashy carbon.

I step closer. “What is that stuff?”

“A powder like chalk to help clear your thoughts, now lean down and I’ll rub it in your head in spots.”

I bow my neck and feel your hooves knead into my forehead. You’re careful and tender; from the charcoal blooms out a dim feeling of peace. As if a headache I didn’t realize I had has suddenly been relieved somewhat. “Whoa. I do feel a little better. More… calm.”

You take your hoof off and I open your eyes to see you smiling at me. You set the mortar and pestle and the crucible back inside and we head around to the pond.

“You cannot practice faith walking yet I fear, but you can practice faith itself, dear.”

“How will I do that?”

You motion for me to come closer, and I do. We’re standing over a drop of a few hooves or so into the pond, and you pull me so I’m facing forward. Then you jump down into the pond and look back, standing up on your hind legs with incredible balance. “I want you to fall forward now, face first you will plow. I will catch you; you must believe it true. Do not flinch and do not think, keep only the belief you will not sink.”

A trust fall. I at least know how this works already, but it’s still scary. I swallow my fear down to a lump in my throat, you looking up all expectantly at me with those beautiful eyes. I can do this. I breathe out slowly and feel the pattern of the ash cool into my face. “Just lean straight forward and stay still and let you catch me.”

“Yes, yes.”

“Okay. Here I go.” I close my eyes and push myself forward with my back legs—tilting like a seesaw, I can feel myself falling, going to smash my face in because I’m falling and you’re not there and—I snap my forelegs forward and bring my back legs down for the impact. My hooves slam straight into something way too soft, and I already feel sick as you catch me around my chest, neck to neck. My hooves grace the surface of the water you stand on.

“Ouch. Now we must try again, okay? Don’t feel bad, we have time left in the day.”

It stings not so much because my legs slammed into your chest, but because I’ve failed a close friend.

“I’m sorry.”

I pull my way back up on the little cliff and turn to where I think I need to stand. You use your front hooves to guide me into the right spot. “Remember,” you say, “To catch you, I am here. You have nothing to fear.”

Right. I fall forward again, but again I flinch. I don’t plant my hooves like last time, but I almost do. It’s a reflex. You’re patient and kind, and after falling maybe twenty times, I have it down to where the only thing I do is flex my face in fear. It feels kind of empowering, knowing that I’ve accomplished this.

We’re about to do it again, when you point to your eyes. “For this time,” you say, “watch yourself fine.”

“Alright.”

So I keep my eyes open and, because we’ve done this for the past hour or a half, my body is fine. I stay still. But a whole new fear broils up and scares me. It’s a marginal success, I at least don’t try to throw my hooves out again.

After that, you hop back onto the ground and say, “Now we can take a break, let’s leave this tiny lake.”

Walking back to your hut, I have to ask, “Are you okay, Zecora? My chest hurts just from being caught.”

“I’m fine, Twilight, I’ve trained for things, with this only minor discomfort brings.”

“Okay.”

You look back at me and read my face. I know I’m not exactly the picture of confidence. But I’ll get better; I’m already thinking over what I’ll write down when I get back to my paper and quills. I leave you at your hut, and take off back town to take care of all the things I have to do today.

I teleport to my room in the castle, taking a gamble on everyone being in the kitchen downstairs and unable to hear; hopefully no one’s come to check on me before now. Then I walk out and take a fast shower before I make my way down to the left wing common room.

There are a bunch of blankets and pillows over the floor, but no ponies and no Spike. I notice for the first time the smell of warm, doughy sugar.

They’ve all gathered in the kitchen. I take a moment to watch from the door before I go in. Starlight has a stack of pancakes on her plate, and she’s talking animatedly with Sunburst, whose plate is empty. He’s smiling and nodding, and behind them Spike is cooking on the stove.

I walk in, “Goodmorning everyone, did you have a good first night?”

All their faces whip over to me. “Oh yeah, it was! Er—we did!” Sunburst says.

Starlight smiles real big at me, “Goodmorning, Twilight. We had a lot of fun, we, uh, stayed up late and played games and things.”

Spike looks over his shoulder at them all, “It was tons of fun, Twilight, you should join in next time.”

I smile, “I’ll try to, Spike. I don’t suppose you’ve got some extra pancakes I could have?”

“Of course!”

So we chat and eat, and I realize I really enjoy Starlight and Sunburst’s company. It’s great to talk with them about deep, technical magic; all the problems with the bleeding-edge theory of electron magic conductivity, and the underlying thought processes of mind-to-magic formulation. As well as life in general. Sunburst is pretty nervous around me, but Starlight being more at ease makes him more at ease, even if not by a whole lot.

About halfway through our excited discussion of the applications of Mattershard’s restructuring spells, I suddenly have a strong impulse to lean forward and squish them together so they kiss. But I don’t do that, because that would be weird; I’m not sure where the impulse came from in the first place.

As pleasant as this morning is, it moves on.

I manage to slip into my secret study where I keep all the cork boards and filing cabinets full of my inked-out thought processes on more personal things. It’s a medium size room, small compared to the rest of the castle, hidden in what was an empty stretch of crystal between the attic levels and the upper floors. I record a few more points about the river and start a new binder for notes on Zebrican magic. I start one for you too—most of our letters aren’t so personal that I feel the need to keep them up here, but… I start one just in case.

I rejoin the rest of the castle before anyone has time to get suspicious. From there, the day dwindles away until it’s bedtime again and I have to sleep again. I already know I’m going to end up at the river. I feel it. In my bones and in my flesh, so once I close the door to my room and turn out the light, I just stand still for a moment to debate whether or not I should teleport out of here and head down to you myself. It would save me some time.

Or maybe I just want to sleep next to you again. It was unexpectedly nice, to the point that it makes me feel weird. I think I just want a friend, but I don’t want the friends I have right now. I don’t know why. And even though we’ve talked through our letters enough for me to consider you a good friend, I definitely don’t know you like I do everypony else. Even though I’m trusting you with things I don’t want to tell them.

It frustrates me that I’m the princess of friendship and I’m having friendship problems. Bah, oh well. I think I’ll be hopeful tonight and sleep in my own bed. Who knows, maybe I won’t sleepwalk tonight. And maybe you’ll come up to the castle to sleep in my bed.

I wake up at the river.

“Twilight, it’s good to see you again. Do you want to come with me, then?”

I look over at your smiling face. Gosh, you’re so pretty, even in the dark. The square yet feminine shape of your muzzle, and the stripes of dark gray lapping at your cheeks and reaching down your head, they’re somehow imposing and adorable at the same time. “Yes, please,” I say as we start walking briskly.

You navigate the terrain effortlessly like always, and it hits me where I know that confidence from—you walk with the same kind of beauty Applejack has when she bucks trees.

You break us into the clearing around your hut as marble-sized water starts to fall from the sky. We duck inside, more than a little damp, and shake ourselves off.

You smile at me, and say, “We can practice some inside, while we wait for the rain to subside.”

“That sounds good, Zecora, but, well, what time is it?” I glance around the room and find your clock. The rain pounds down overhead, it’s only three thirty, and you must be tired as well, right? “Could we sleep a little more?”

“Of course, you sleepy horse.”

I try not to get excited as we head to bed together again.

You smile and face me as we climb in. “I sense you want to feel safe and huddled, would it be okay in this case if we cuddled?”

It takes more restraint than I want to admit to not burst into tears. I don’t even know why; it’s like I’ve had stones on my soul for years, and you’ve come along and been the first to suggest I take them off. So I nod quickly, and let you roll me onto my other side. You pull me up to you; pressing your chest against my back and your inner thighs against my croup. I feel incredibly protected and some kind of happy-embarrassed. It would be infantilizing if you weren’t so sincere; making me feel secure and loved.

It takes a while for me to fall asleep again. I keep as still as I can because you’re asleep in minutes and for a warm, peaceful time you’re holding me close while your chest swells and falls with deep breathing. The rain thunders overhead into a kind white noise.

When we wake up, about three hours later, you ask me if I want breakfast this time before we start training for water walking. I’m curious and hungry, so I say yes, and inside of ten minutes you have two delicious bowls of couscous made up for us. It feels a bit like eating mushroom noodle soup for breakfast, but I think you intended that.

While I’m balancing with my hooves on a small pole, ash on my face again and the stick not even half the length of the one you’re head-standing on, I have a thought.

It would be different if it were with my other friends, but I think its okay to ask you, so at the risk of being burdensome I do. “Zecora, I don’t mean to ask for more favors, but do you think you could carry me across the river?”

You look up from your meditative eyes-closed position. “I do not think it wise that you cross with another pony at all, but if you want we can try and see if we fall. I will keep my eyes closed, because the other side only to you goes.”

“I think it might be worth a shot. Just in case, you know,” as I fall off the stick again I think you understand my thoughts.

“We can try right now,” you jump down and catch the pole as it tips slowly. “But you failing—I can’t see how.”

That makes me smile, as I rub my flank from the impact.

We reach the river pretty quickly, and I can feel all the emotions of it sift back inside. The vexation, the hate, the longing. You tie a blindfold around your eyes and plug your ears to stop yourself from even hearing what is apparently only mine.

“Twilight? I am ready, alright?” You reach a hoof out blindly, and I catch it. I climb on your back, your stripped mohawk poking into my neck. It would be much more of an awkward situation if I wasn’t drenched in anxiety and apprehension.

For all I know, the other side of that river is death. And my destiny is the great what-comes-next that’s so highly debated. In that case, I hope you don’t die. I hope that I don’t die either, really, but if that’s what’s waiting for me then whatever. I just want it to not hurt you.

“I’m ready,” I say into your neck, patting the side of a foreleg lightly. “Let’s go.”

You straighten up and confidently put one hoof in front of the other. Entirely unfazed as you stand on the water and start walking forward.

The mist swallows us into its opaque stomach. As we move forward, a wet, white fear licks my bones. My body shakes without my consent, the air fights against my lungs. I’m going to suffocate or we’re going to reach the shore and I don’t know which one’s worse. My forelegs constrict themselves around your neck like vices, I feel hot liquid leaking from my face. Blood? Tears? Wind whips up like the call of a hurricane, so strong my jaw won’t move, trying to bite through my teeth.

“Twilight,” I hear you choke out from far away. “Twilight!”

Motion seems to swirl around a bit, or maybe I’m moving as I watch it, the burning colors behind my eyes. Flesh trembles under my hooves, but I can’t tell who it belongs to. My own muscles grow wooden, splintering as you gallop with my legs, I’m all alone but with you, a black wire lacerates my muzzle and I go numb just as a spray of water eats our hind legs with the sharp echo of breaking glass.

Ch.3 - Supports and Facades

It’s odd finding yourself covered in goo when you previously were not. I sit up slowly, and the first thing that hits me after the cold tingling of the gel all over is the ache in my mouth. I feel my tongue around to the coppery taste of blood. The pain swims it’s way into me and I realize I bit a small part of the inside of my cheek. A thick, brown syrup smothers my hide; you’ve massaged it into the fur on my undercarriage, on my barrel, into the feathers in my wings, into my chest and up my neck. Bits of it have smudged themselves onto the bed as well. The smell fills my nose; wafting somewhere between vinegar and menthol.

Doing my best to not smear too much more of this viscus potion onto the covers, I get to my hooves and, with my wings held out from my sides, walk into the living room.

You’re stirring a small cauldron over a fire, but look up sharply when I enter. I have no idea what to say. The first thing that bubbles out is, “Well I guess that wasn’t a good idea.”

You jump over and hug me, goop and all, and hesitate for just a tiny moment as you pull back. “You were quite injured from that experience, and I had to use a strong potion, hence. Wait for it to dry and crack, then you can get it off your back.”

I nod, which makes me notice the dull ache clenching my head. “I’m really sorry for freaking out. What, uh, happened exactly?”

You smile kind of softly, and I notice the dark just under the fur on your neck.

“Oh my gosh, Zecora, did I bruise you?” Somehow, this feels even worse than blacking out earlier. I put one hoof slowly to your chest, subconsciously trying to will it healed again. “Are you okay? I’m so sorry, I—“

“Twilight, it is fine. The fault is also mine. Although I guessed, I should have known, you have to make this journey on your own.”

Just sort of putting two and two together, I scrape some goop off myself and gently rub it on you. You start laughing; the sound falls into my ears and becomes the most beautiful noise I’ve heard in ages. You reach up and still my hoof.

“This does not work for bruises, not for everything, this ooze is. It revives and helps heal, but not things so physically real. The river affected you adversely, you are not ready for your destiny. Or whatever lies on the other shore, you must train some more. And when the fear comes again, next time you will win my friend.”

I sigh. “I don’t know what to do. And even if I get good at faith-water-walking, how do I face it? How do I confront what’s on the other side? How do I get that thing back again and—and put it back inside me? I don’t know… I don’t know if I can do it, Zecora.”

You smile all tender and nice again, and say, “You must prepare yourself, it’s true. But I cannot say what to do. I only know it will come from inside, and so whatever it is do not hide.”

I nod. You’re right, really. But I don’t like not knowing. I nod again. “How long have I been out?”

You point up at the clock, and my breath catches in my throat as I see the hand holds the time past noon. “Oh no, uh, Zecora, will I be okay for the rest of the day?”

“I have another potion to administer, but if you miss it, it will not be sinister. Go on and do your work, I will see you when at the river you lurk.”

“Okay. Thank you so much for everything, I’m so sorry again about bruising your neck. I’ll be back at night—thank you Zecora!”

I dash out and hit the Everfree before I teleport to the stairs of the castle. I sneak in quickly, and look around. If I am very lucky nopony’s noticed my absence.

“Twilight!”

Well.

Spike rushes up to me, concerned. “I’ve been looking for you all morning! Wait, why are you covered in… chocolate syrup? Mud?”

“Yeah, it’s a long…ish story. Uh, Spike, where are Sunburst and Starlight?”

“They’re visiting the museum today. Are you alright?”

I must look worse for wear. “Yeah, yeah, I’m fine. I’m just going to go, uh, get to work.”

He follows along as I try to walk away, “Are you going to wash that stuff out of your coat?”

“Well, I was thinking maybe I’d just let it dry. Like, you know, a spa treatment thing.”

He looks at me like I’ve suggested he eat a window curtain. “Okay, if you want to I guess. What happened? Where were you?”

“Like I said, it’s a long story. I’ll tell you later, Spike, okay?”

“Okay.” He narrows his eyes at me, but eventually I shake him off and get to work.

It’s harder than I thought it would be to organize and fill out paperwork and reshelf books covered in what looks and feels like congealing apple butter. It seeps a chill into me, tingly-numb, but only on the places where you put it. The rest of me, along my back and face and the top of my wings, feel overly warm and sensitive in contrast.

The day wears on, somehow I manage to weasel my way out of explaining exactly what happened, and get to slip off to bed an hour early. It gives me time to wink into my secret study again and write down everything that happened.

Once it’s all down in ink and paper, I decide to go ahead and get to your hut. It’s not like I wouldn’t end up there anyway, and besides, we didn’t get to talk enough earlier.

My study is soundproofed so I can leave from there directly—there are no actual exits into the rest of the castle from here anyway. It’s so well hidden because the only openings into the room are ventilation shafts and a window I could break in an emergency. The only way in or out besides is through teleportation. No one can find a secret door if there are no secret doors, and I doubt any unicorns that come through here will try to teleport into what they assume is solid crystal.

In a flash I’m at your front door. I knock, and briefly worry if I might be disturbing you.

You open the door, and smile with surprise. “Twilight, here so soon, to what do I owe this boon?”

“Hey, Zecora, I just thought I’d come down before I even went to sleep. I, uh.” This feels silly all of a sudden. “Well, and to talk some more, if you have the time.”

You nod, “Come in, come in.”

Your pleasant hut swallows me up. You hoof me the potion you wanted me to drink earlier, a reddish liquid sloshing in a glass bottle, then sit on a cushion on the floor, and invite me to sit across from you.

“What is you want to say, that brought you for an early stay?”

“I didn’t get to describe what happened to me, before I left. I don’t know if it’ll help, but I want to tell you what I felt.”

“Mmmhmm. I could feel you tense over my spine, shaking and clutching; it to fear I did assign. But what was it that frightened you so? This much at least I am desperate to know.”

“I felt fear come over me, a lot of it. The situation wasn’t as scary as some of the things I’ve faced, but it felt stronger. I think maybe it was trying to make me afraid, I think it cast fear into me with some kind of spell. I had trouble breathing, and then I think I hallucinated? There were colors and nothing made sense—some kind of dissociative effect. The last thing I remember is my hind legs hitting water and the distant sound of glass breaking. Does any of this help?”

“Hmm. Your experience is proof of how strong this river’s magic has been all along. I can continue training you to use my magic, to avoid another outcome this tragic. But I still believe what you need most in this case, is to get to the other side post-haste.”

“Okay. So we just keep training until I can do it. Well, I’m eager to learn all that you can teach me.”

We talk a little longer about what happened, and then decide to hit the hay. I hope it’s not just my mind distorting things when you seem just as excited as I know I am to cuddle again. To peacefully be together again.

With this excitement I think I see on you, I grow bolder as we crawl under the covers. “Zecora?” I ask as you blow out the gold light, plunging us into the blueish dark.

“Hmm?”

“Can I ask you a personal question?”

“Of course, Twilight, that is alright.”

“Why do you always rhyme when you talk?”

You settle in, facing me, and smile sadly. Gentle wisdom rolls off your eyes, and I realize I don’t know much about who you were before you came to Ponyville at all. I just know what kind of pony, zebra really, you are to us, and I guess that was enough for me to—well, to start crushing on you.

“I learned Equestrian as a second language you see, and much through music, where rhyme comes naturally. So I decided to challenge myself, and keep rhyming as long as I had good health.”

“Is that really it? Oh—I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be rude.”

“It’s okay, I say.” You take two hooves and hold one of mine. “There is more to the story, though it does not inspire glory.”

“I won’t tell anyone if you don’t want me too.”

You nod, and, much more somberly, say, “It is also a cast, I use to face my past. I have not always been a good zebra, and when I wanted to change I had an idea. To take a vow, but of silence was too much. So I made it of rhyme, and shied from touch.”

“Wait, you mean you speak in rhymes as a kind of self-reformation? And why did you shy from touch?”

“Aye, that is mostly why. And I separated myself because,” you look down at my ribcage, not even a trace of a smile left, “afraid of hurting anyone, I was.”

“Oh, Zecora,” I pull you forward over the mattress, and hold your head close. “I’m sure what you did wasn’t that bad. Even if it was, you’re a good pony now. You’ve changed. And all of Ponyville really likes you now, you don’t have to hide away anymore.”

“I was just a bully; no one died. And, well, to you I do not hide.”

I feel my face burn. This conversation is too serious for flirting, but our relationship must be pretty deep if you’re willing to open up to me so much. If you don’t hide from me like you force yourself to do for the rest of Ponyville and our friends. “I really appreciate that, Zecora. I like who you are now; I can’t even imagine you being mean. And you know, if you wanted to stop rhyming around me, that would be okay.”

You lean up, smiling again, and meet my eyes in the dark. “Would that make your heart sing?” You pause, and for a moment I think you won’t rhyme, but then you finish, “Perhaps in the morning.” Then you hug me tight, I hug you back, and sleep takes you in moments. It leaves me awake for much longer, but right now I don’t mind so much.

Ch.4 - Wearing Thin

I wake up at the river, and sigh. You’re at my side, and I ask, “What time is it?”

“Twilight Sparkle, it is three AM.”

Great. It’s too early—I whip back to you and wait. A broad smile cracks over your face.

“Yes?”

I lunge forward and pull you into my forelegs. “I’m so glad you trust me enough for this, Zecora!” I look you in the eyes, and jerk back the impulse to kiss you. “You can rhyme again whenever you want. But thank you for—I don’t know—being so vulnerable around me.”

“Well, you are vulnerable yourself right now. Look at this river, I’m sure you understand how. Whoop!” You laugh cutely, “Huhuhuh, that one was unintentional.”

I giggle too. We start walking back to your hut, and the strongest joy I have felt since I started sleepwalking swells inside my heart.

For training, I stretch and pole stand and meditate with you for a while, though both balancing and keeping my mind empty are much harder than they have a right to be. And more than once, I stare up to your serene face as you stay stock-still suspended in the air by the pole pinning up your head. It’s very impressive, and fuels my drive to improve.

Then, after a while of that, you jump down and say we’re going to start on harnessing energy. We head outside, into the clearing boarded against the undulating green and quiet cacophony of chirps and roars, and you stand with your hooves apart about shoulder width. “Stand with posture like me, Twilight; stable and hooves out alright? Oh, I rhymed again, huhuhuh.”

I try to mimic your pose, and you break to spread each of my legs out to where they should be.

“It is so strange to not rhyme around somepony else. It has been years since this.”

“Do you—“ my head spins for a second as your hoof touches my inner thigh to adjust it. “—like the feeling?”

“I feel I have more freedom. Although, I do still rhyme some. Huhuhuh, just like that.”

“If you want to rhyme, go right ahead.”

“No, you are right. It is a crutch, I should let it die. Besides, although it can be fun to rhyme it is rarely easy and easily stressful.”

“I like your spoken prose. It feels… I don’t want to be mean, but it does feel like I can communicate with you more effectively now.”

You’ve finished moving around my limbs and fix a smirk at me. “I am easier to understand?”

“Well...” I blush. “Yes. But your rhyming isn’t bad—“

“I know what you are saying. Each conversation had it’s wings clipped by how well I could find rhymes for what we talked of.”

“It made it hard sometimes. But I do really like hearing you like this. Your voice is still beautiful.”

“Hmm, thank you Twilight. Now,” You flip around and stand in front of me, a few paces to my right. Your shapely flank, I admit, is somewhat distracting. “There is non-magic energy that flows through your body and through the world. It is called chi. There is also a natural magic that runs through our world, you are familiar with it, called mana. Zebrican magic uses your chi in conjunction with your faith to bring out the mana of the world around you. When they come together, they create a force called ujasiri. In Equestrian that word it is close to bravery, courage, and fortitude, though there is no direct translation that I know of.”

“Woah. Wait, wait, I know we’re getting started and we’re going to do something physical in a moment but can I write this down?”

You giggle, and shake your head. “Of course, Twilight. Would you rather a lecture than a lesson today?”

“No, no, I just want to make sure I don’t forget or misremember anything. I don’t have to break my pose, hold on.” I reach out with my magic and pull on the binder I keep in my secret room. It takes some energy but I zap the thing to me, along with a quill and an inkwell. I scribble down everything you just told me in shorthand, and look back eagerly for you to keep talking.

“The energy you use from your body is directed by your movements and your intent. For you to feel this energy that flows in you, we will practice martial arts. For now, we will back kick.”

“Okay.” I set my notes down on the ground to focus.

“Lift up one back leg off the ground, bring it only up.” You fold one back leg up and I follow suit. “Next, push backward as hard as you can in a straight motion.”

Your kick is stiff and precise; you hold the leg up exactly where it would’ve hit, your hoof level with my body. Mine gets up, but the motion bursts out as inelegant, clumsy even, and I can’t hold it up like you.

“Very good. As you stretch and practice you will gain height and smoothness. Bring it up, and then out.” You kick again, faster and stronger, high enough you could hit the tip of my horn. Probably even break it if you wanted to.

“Wow.”

“You must focus your intent to strike through your leg; let the energy in your body flow out and into the motion. You must feel the force of it!”

We practice kicking for a while, you show me exaclty how to do it and even pull my leg up and make the motions for me. You tell me that my energy has to be strong and flow from some point just below my teats; my skin tingles as you tap the spot. I write down everything you say and every detail of what we do.

When we finish for the morning my back legs burn and I’m tired but my mind races with curiosity, running through every moment of what we did.

As we come up to the door, you ask, “Do want to see a demonstration of this magic at a higher level?”

“Of course!”

“Then watch closely.” You wink at me, then turn back toward the side door to your hut. Instead of opening it, you walk forward. Silently, you clip through it in an easy gate, the wood yielding like it’s intangible. My mouth hangs open as your tail swishes away into the door, disappearing.

“What! What!? You can do that?”

You stick your head back out again without opening it. “This takes more energy and practice, but is it so different from walking on water? To the pond I say ‘you are solid’; to the door I say ‘you are not’.” You smile coyly and pull your head back.

“How did I never know this? How did you never tell me this?” I have to open the door like the novice I am now and you’re grinning inside, pleased with yourself and how impressed I am. “That’s amazing!”

“Huhuhu, yes, thank you. Perhaps eventually I can teach it to you as well. Ahh, but it seems our time is up for today. Six thirty, what do you say?”

“Well, I guess I should get going. Thanks for all of this Zecora, really.”

You put a foreleg over my back. “You are quite welcome. Will you come back again tonight?”

“Yes, I’d like to, please.”

“Then I will be expecting you. Now go, have a good day, Twilight Sparkle.”

I gently ease out from your foreleg, and smile at you before I teleport away.

At the castle, I make my way out of my room and head on downstairs. As the day tumbles onward I swim through the motions with my head full of fog. Just waiting to see you again, to train again for whatever this river’s hiding. Still mulling over how impressively you melted into the door. I don’t catch a chance to spend more time organizing my notes about you and your magic. I’ll have to try and get in some time tomorrow.

When the evening spreads its dusty wings over our small town once more, I have the sudden inclination to walk to your hut instead of teleporting. I know enough defensive and offensive magic to be safe from the Everfree creatures, and my legs feel like they need some activity. That might be the earthpony in me raising it’s quiet voice, as it does sometimes. It might also be my subconcious desire to be strong like you; your demonstration earlier still shifts through my thoughts and kicking woke my muscles up to how much time I spend static. So after I say goodnight and everything, I sneak out the castle doors and start trotting.

I’m nearing the Everfree tree line, thinking up several spells that will be handy against whatever lurks within when a voice calls out and stops me.

“Twilight?” Applejack gallops up and continues, “Are you okay? Why are you heading out to the forest so late, is something going on?” She must have just now finished breaking down the apple stall from the market; all the bits and bobs are in a cart she’s left behind a couple meters away.

Now I have to think up a pretext for being here at all. “Oh, Applejack, it’s nice to see you, uh, I was just… um… going to see Zecora.” There really isn’t much else I can say I’m about to do that will make any sense.

“Oh. What for?” She seems relieved, relaxing in her standing pose a little more.

“Well, I need a potion for, uh…” I hate lying to her, especially when she used to be the element of honesty and all. “…Spike! He’s having trouble sleeping, so I’m going to get a potion.” Sort of close to the truth kind of. It’s not.

“Well, alright, Twilight. Had me darn’d spooked, walking up to the Everfree in the middle of the night and all. Be careful out there, ya’ hear?”

“I will be, Applejack, have a good night.”

“You too, sugarcube.”

I scramble through the brambles for a few minutes and realize this was kind of stupid. I can’t stride through this like you do, at least not yet, and what thin path that fights to stretch out from under fallen logs or across buggy streams is overgrown on all sides, you being one of the only ones to really use it. The speed of the forest growth doesn’t help. I fumble over sticks and roots, through vines and plants that spark my fear as my resolve wanes.

I can’t do it. I teleport when I’m halfway there. But I don’t feel so bad about it, actually. I knock on your door and you pull it open. You look happy, and it makes me so happy just to see that.

We drink some herbal tea you had all prepared for me, and then slip into bed together. I feel a little weird about it this time. As if maybe I shouldn’t be here in your bed sleeping next to you when we aren’t dating or anything—not like I haven’t slept in the same bed as spike or Applejack or many of my other friends before. It solidifies my realization that I have a massive crush on you. I try to chase it out of my mind; I’ll think about it when I have a chance to put it all on paper.

“Twilight,” you say in your deep, beautiful voice, “do you feel alright?”

“Uh.” For a split second I’m sure that you’ve found me out. That you know how much I want to kiss you. But then I realize you’re just talking about the training and the river. “Yeah. I feel less worried with you training me for it. Helping out. How do you know what to do?”

“I can feel it on the river bank, and I’ve heard of magic similar to this before. Only in old Zebrican tales, so I think it means I need to teach you Zebrican magic to get across.”

A thousand questions buzz through me and internally I lament once again how few books there are about Zebrica. “That’s so… I. Zecora, if we get through this, will you teach me more magic? And teach me how to read Zebrican?”

“If we do? And you’d want to learn all of that?”

“Yes, of course I want to learn all of that. The stuff you do—it’s amazing and it’s unlike any style of spellcasting or enchantment that I’ve seen before. And if they have books about it in Zebrican by Celestia I want to learn Zebrican.”

You grin real big and wiggle your nose into my neck. “Thank you Twilight. I would love to share my knowledge with you.”

I feel giddy. Tingles wiggle all through my gut. In the moment I hug you and imagine all of the things we should do together. This missing piece of mine, the crawling under my skin that feeds a vacuum inside my life, I want to beat it. Or satiate it or kill it or whatever I have to do to get it out of me and spend more time with you.

I watch you while you sleep—there’s nothing else to do as I wait to fall asleep myself. You’re so peaceful, breathing deep and lying pressed into me. As my consciousness finally softens to the warm blur of dreams, I wonder why it is that it took me so long to really get to know you.

The water laps my fetlocks and I wake up. “What time is it?”

“Around three thirty.”

“Damn. Okay, let’s go train.”

You bring out a pad today, for our martial arts, and hold it up behind me.

“I want you to kick the center of this pad, I will hold it up for you.”

I kick with one leg and miss the thing entirely, my hoof jerking out too far to the right.

“When you kick,” you say, unsurprised apparently, “I want you to focus your energy on the target. Focus your chi; flow it out to strike not the surface of the target but so far into your target that you’re aiming for the space behind. Let the chi flow all the way through. Visualize it, feel it happening.”

It’s a black and red bag with a strap on the back and two concentric circles printed on the front. I am for the one in the middle, and imagine I’m trying to hit something behind it. The energy rushes from my flank down my leg and into the motion. My hoof bashes into the outer ring, a solid blow.

“Very good! Again.”

When I get back to the castle after training–worn out and covered in dirt—Starlight immediately confronts me. I have to wonder if she was waiting at the door.

“Twilight! I—oh. Are you okay?”

“Yeah, long story. What’s up?”

“Well, I was just wondering if we could add you to our sleepover today? I know you said maybe next time a while ago, and Sunburst isn’t staying forever, so...” She trails off and grimaces nervously at me. I shake my head to clear it. I’ve become so infatuated with you, and distracted by this thing that’s happening inside me, that I forgot the rest of my life is important too.

“Yes, absolutely!” I say, as enthusiastically as I can manage.

“Great! It’s going to be extra fun tonight because I invited Maud—“ she stops dead and looks back at me. “UhhHhh is it alright if I invite Maud over?”

I laugh, and take a minute to look down at the mud on my hooves. This doesn’t feel very real right now. Even though I’m here. “Yes, Starlight, you can invite anyone over that you want. As my protégée, this castle is half yours too you know.”

“Oh thanks, Twilight, really. I mean I already invited her over, but, well, you know. Uh. Thanks Twilight!”

I close the door behind me and ask her how it’s going with her friends, and the sleepovers, and this whole thing orchestrated for her friendship lessons. But I can’t push my mind around to focus and I need to clean off. “Hey, Starlight, I’m really happy that it’s going well and that you’re doing well, but I need to shower real quick.”

“Oh, of course, do you want to keep talking when you get out?”

“Yes, I would love to.”

I scrub all of the dirt off and decide to send you a letter that I’m staying at a sleepover tonight. I’m sure you’ll understand. And I’m sure I’ll end up back at that stupid river. But whatever. Just because the walk from the palace to the river stretches out longer than from your hut to the river doesn’t mean I can’t make it.

The sleepover is nice. I get to talk to Sunburst a bunch, and make a mental note to learn more about him. I ask him as casually as I can if he knows anything about Zebrica, but he knows even less than me. I try again with Maud and she tells me she wants to visit it one day to see the tanzanite mines.

After the last game of chess we decide to hit the hay. Everyone slips into their sleeping bags in the common room and after a rambling, late-night conversation, I’m left to spend a good while tracing the geometry of the ceiling while I wait for sleep to take me.

Suddenly somethings shouting in my ear and I jerk awake. I flail my forelegs at it and tumble down a few stairs. It hurts, and takes me a minute to realize where I am, laid out over several of the steps leading up to the castle entrance.

“Twilight!” Starlight says, leaning down over me. “Are you alright?”

I feel anxiety curdle into all of my muscles, and shame spreads hotly over my face. I hope she can’t see it as I stand up and get my balance before meeting her eyes below the bloom of white light she’s casting from her horn “Uh.”

“You were sleepwalking. Are you alright? I know you aren’t supposed to wake a sleepwalker, but, you were going outside and I didn’t know if—”

“It’s okay.” I can see her fear that she was a bad friend so I head it off at the pass. “I’m alright. I was just uh. Sleep walking, yep.” I smile, and then realize that I probably shouldn’t.

“Do you do this often?”

I don’t want her to know how much I’m falling apart, and a disappointment that I might not get to see you tonight gnaws at my gut. “I um… It’s a side effect!”

“A side effect? Of what?”

“Well, uh...” I don’t know why I blurted that out, and looking out across the dark town and the light spilling down the rest of the crystal steps from Starlight isn’t giving me any ideas. “Of this new medication I’m on for...” I don’t have anywhere to go but there. I fake my best I'm-embarrassed grimace that I can, helped along by the genuine guilt I feel, and say “...a rash. On my undercarriage.”

“Oh. Well, do you want to look for some spells tomorrow to maybe prevent that?”

“Yeah, that sounds great,” I say, fully aware that none of them will work because I tried them all months ago. “We can go back inside now.”

We start walking inside and a mix of disappointment and vertigo washes through me. I don’t like lying to her, but I can’t tell her that I’m going crazy. I don’t want anyone else to know about this thing except you and me. My self-diagnostics kick in and I realize maybe that’s a part of this magic I’ve stumbled into. Maybe it bullies me into being quiet until it can finally get me across the river and… do something. Or maybe I’m just more ashamed than I thought to be so completely lost while in such a high position of power and responsibility.

We re-enter the dark common room and slip back into our sleeping bags. There’s still some lights on in the palace, and from somewhere a dim splay of muted gold, almost colorless, slashes over the hewn-crystal patterns in the ceiling.

I move my head back down to stare at the wall, and catch her looking at me out of the corner of my eyes.

“Twilight?” she whispers.

“Yes Starlight?”

“Do you think I did okay today? With the sleepover.”

“Yes Starlight, you were a great friend today.”

“Thank you. Twilight?”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks for coming.”

My heart aches. I need to stop slacking off just because I’m tired. “I’m happy to be here.”

I can see her beaming in the dark, and then squirming inside her sleeping bag. Her breath evens out about ten minutes later, and I’m left staring up and wondering if I’ll get any more sleep. Wondering if I should go ahead and make my way to you myself.

I can feel the call. The river wants me there. It’s pulling in my bones and twitching through my flesh. And I want to see you again. I feel like I need to. Like I’m about to miss an appointment, an important one, forgetting to go to a scheduled therapist or a doctor visit. Or a date.

I blush as I think that. In the semi-silence my thoughts race. I have to go. But I have to be sneaky and teleporting would be way too loud.

I slip out of my sleeping bag as quietly as possible, then freeze for a moment, standing with my wings outstretched and alert. Everything sounds okay. Slowly, placing each hoof down as delicately as I can, I start my way to the hall. Then down the stairs, going a little faster, then out the door.

In the night air again. I need to get to the river. You were going to meet me there anyway so I can’t just go to your hut.

I fly out to the edge of the Everfree and haul myself above it. These wings are still clumsy and inexperienced, but I want to fly there. For whatever reason, it feels like I need to get to the river using my body.

Eventually, after much flapping and fretting over the dark canopy below, I see the river. Even from up high, everything after it is only mist. I descend onto the bank and look around for you.

You’re sitting not too far away, with your back to me. As I walk up, I take in the stripes laced over your spine, the way your tail lays curled around you, and your stiff mane peaking up. You look lonely. And I wonder suddenly if you actually enjoy living out here all alone. I have to. You’re just a zebra sitting at the edge of a stupid river, with no neighbors or friends for kilometers. I want to scoop you up and carry you into the next day and put you down in town and have everyone instantly become your friend.

But I have to settle for walking up to you instead. You turn, surprised, when you hear me. “Twilight? You’re awake.”

“Yes. Starlight woke me up once I started sleepwalking, but I didn’t feel right going back to bed. I could still feel it calling to me.” I look out over to the fog.

“Hmmm.”

“What’re you thinking?”

“I am worrying about you.”

A smile fights the frown on my face. I pull you to me and nuzzle into your neck. “Thank you. I’m worried about you too.” I meet your eyes, “You live out here all alone and rhyme all the time because you feel bad about who you used to be. Are you okay? You can come to Ponyville any time you want you know, not just when you need groceries.”

Something like sadness or restraint holds back the curve of your lips. “Thank you Twilight Sparkle. I might start coming more. I am not the best at making friends though.” You look across the river yourself.

“I mean it. I really like you Zecora, you’re a wonderful zebra. You wake up at three o’clock just for me, you’re teaching me all of this stuff just so I can get across this stupid river. I really appreciate it. I appreciate you.”

You seem more sincerely happy now, trickles of joy glowing into your eyes. “Well, I am not entirely altruistic. I do want some company and I genuinely enjoy teaching you. And I like you too, Twilight, very much so.”

My heart beats way too fast. This is flirting, right? I wonder if there’s enough light for you to see how red my face is as I completely fail to recall anything from The Romantic in You, a Guide to Dating or any other books I’ve read about this. “Do… do you want to talk and cuddle a bit before we train?”

“I would love that. Can you take us home?”

Us. Home. I know you didn’t necessarily mean it like that but that’s how it enters my mind first, that your home is now suddenly our home. “Of course!” I zap us to the front door of your hut and we go inside. Lay on the mattress together and start talking.

“Zecora?” I ask, holding you from behind, with my wing draped over your legs and my nose in the back of your head. I keep my eyes closed so I can focus on how warm and tingly you are against my skin and my feathers. “I’m going to ask something that’s going to scare you. Just hear me out, okay?”

“Okay.”

Ch.5 - Fragile Blood

“Have you ever thought about suicide?”

Immediately you tense under me.

“I mean—I don’t want to die. I don’t want to leave Ponyville and the princesses and my family and you. But sometimes I feel like I’m… overstaying my welcome. I wasn’t supposed to be here; I’ve gone too far. Me? A princess? Wasn’t there somepony more qualified who was supposed to take up that mantle instead of me? I know it’s silly. And I’m not going to kill myself. But the river has me reeling through all of these thoughts, and I wonder if it’s… calling me on. To whatever’s next. And I’m so curious about that too—if I die then maybe I’ll finally be able to learn everything I can’t get my head around. Maybe I’ll get to see what magic and math actually are, not obstructed by the systems we’ve fabricated to try and understand it all. Pi is an infinite number but a circle can exist in a finite space. We still have no idea how magnets or gravity work. And why can only some applications of spells actually create or destroy matter—Seventh Circle’s theory of malbalancing is accepted but it’s filled with holes.

“I feel so out of place with where I am, but it’s not like I can just walk away from all of this. And I’m so frustrated that whoever made the universe didn’t bother telling us how it works. Sometimes it makes me think about death, and, well, it’s not unpleasant. I don’t want to die, to make everyone sad, to leave you behind, but I don’t want to not die. It scares me, what if I’m immortal now that I’m an alicorn? What if I never get out of this, never learn everything I could, never get to return to who I was before I became a part of the monarchy? I used to be afraid of death, when I was a little filly. But I’m… I’m kind of excited for it now. And one of my biggest fears is that I’m here forever. That I won’t die. So if suicide is the only way, if I have to really work at it, then one day I think I’ll have to do it.

“I’m not going to kill myself. But I want to die one day. I want that inevitability back.” I nuzzle the base of your head, brushing up your mowhawk with the side of my nose. The stiff of crisp keratin enters one nostril, and the slightly musty pillow enters the other. Your soap is light in the scent of you, a tickle of myrrh with every breath I draw. “Please don’t be afraid.”

“Twilight, I am not afraid.” You’ve relaxed, I realize, as your limber and breathing body pressed against mine juxtaposes the stiffness in my legs and wings. From the depths of my lungs comes the reminder to breathe. You continue, “It does not scare me that you think of the world beyond. I know you are anxious, and stressed. You are right about death. It is the one universal experience. To be denied that would be disheartening at the least. And your curiosity does not surprise me, Twilight. Your drive to learn is part of what makes you beautiful.”

That comment stirs up feathers in my stomach.

“I want you to find happiness here in Equestria. But I know you will always be curious. If you live forever, perhaps you will see ponykind unravel all the mysteries of the universe. And if you feel you must leave, after millions of years on this planet, then I am sure your friends will understand.”

“Really? You’d be okay with that?”

“I do not want you to kill yourself Twilight. It would make me depressed beyond measure. And I do not think the other side of the river will take you to the same place as death. But I understand what you are saying.”

“Have you ever thought about that yourself?”

“Not in much seriousness. In passing I have imagined it, but even in my darkest time I did not believe it was the only way out.”

“I’m glad. I’m glad that you didn’t. I don’t think that either. I’m just… worried about it.” You roll over, folding your forelegs to your chest and gently pushing my wing up so you don’t ruffle the feathers so much. I open my eyes and see you looking calmly into me.

“You are very anxious, Twilight Sparkle. This has always been a part of you. If there is anything I can do to alleviate your nerves, please tell me.”

I have to make a conscious effort to not reach my mouth to your soft, worry-pursed lips. “Talking to you, training to get across this river, cuddling in your bed… this is helping very much.”

You smile at me. “I am glad. I will always be here for you.”

A moment passes in quiet. After wresting with my tongue I manage to say, “Zecora, thank you so much. For everything. In one of your letters a while ago you mentioned you were lonely sometimes. Do you want to talk about it?”

We keep talking for what feels like twenty minutes, but ends up being two hours. And I don’t want to stop. I don’t want to train today, I just want to talk to you until my throat runs dry. And then I want to sleep until it feels better.

But by five o’clock we get up and start training.

“We can start the walking, if you’re ready.”

“Let’s do it.”

So you take me back outside to the little pond again, and say, “Remember your faith in me, Twilight, how I would always catch you easily?”

“Yes.”

“Remember that here as you step out. Know that the water will be solid,” you put one hoof down there, then another, and stand fully supported, “and it will hold. You must clear your mind to all but this faith; all but this confidence in what will happen. At the same time, focus your energy to your hooves and into that idea. Let the universe use your magic to make your truth a reality.”

“Okay.” I take a deep breath, connect eyes with you, then look down and put one hoof on the water as confidently as possible. It sinks right through, and I’m annoyed with myself that I’m not more surprised. “Damnit.”

You move out completely on the water, and face me, “Try closing your eyes. Imagine you are stepping onto more solid ground, not the water all around. And remember your focus and your energy.”

“Okay.” I put a hoof down again, flowing my chi through my foreleg like we’ve practised with punches and front kicks. I don’t know if it’s because I want it so bad, or if I’m actually making progress, but the water seems ever so slightly thicker as my hoof sinks straight through.

We try more, until we can feel the sun breaking on our backs. After that comparatively light day of training, I head home. I’m still thinking of you as I slip into the bath. As I daydream I’m in the river again. As I comb my mind to try and think of any books on Zebrica at all that I know of. It’s got to have an entry in the encyclopedia. And I think I had an old cultural reference guide, at some point. It might be in my old library in Canterlot that I let Moondancer use.

I cast a goggle spell, just a simple spell that temporarily protects your eyes from weak attacks, and open them underwater. The underside of the suds are silver-black kaleidoscopes laced with dirt. There has to be something to this. To why I’m suddenly falling in love with you and being called by the river. Why I still miss Golden Oaks so much, why these wings still feel so foreign. What happened to me? Where am I going now? Why am I here? Why did Celestia make me a princess? Why does anything have to exist at all?

I need to get back into my study to sketch some of this out. And I need to make a list about you and me.

I close my eyes again and breathe out all my air. It feels like my lungs were empty in the first place.

When I rejoin the party in the common room, Spike is awake and reading a comic book. Everyone else is still asleep.

“Hey Spike. I got up early and went ahead and washed. You want to help me make breakfast?”

“Yeah, that sounds good.”

We bake some muffins, and wait for Starlight, Maud, and Sunburst to wake up. Maud is curled around a rock she brought with her, some kind of igneous stone. Starlight is sleeping with her mouth open, sprawled half out of her sleeping bag, and Sunburst is pulled up into a log. He looks peaceful.

Before I can tell Spike to keep an eye on them while I go check the library, he tells me, “I’ll go shower real quick before they get up. If they do wake up, go ahead and start eating. I’ll be real fast.” He scampers down the hall and I’m stuck here.

It leaves me a moment to stare at the muffins. Why are they here? What could possibly lead to them being made at all; surely they’re not real. I know they are, though. Even if they just feel fake; like if I blink too hard the muffin tin will be back in the pantry and the flour jar refilled. I go ahead and eat one just to convince myself that their existence is not as delicate as it seems. It makes my teeth feel brittle.

Ch.6 - Autopilot

Over the next two weeks, you and I spend a lot more time with eachother. Every moment I have free I come over and practice whatever I can. Balancing, trust exercises, stretches, breathing exercises, martial arts, splashing into the pond, whatever I can manage. I slowly get better at everything except the actual faith walking. I fail every time, which makes it harder all over again because I know that I’m going to fail. And the bitter erosion of how real anything feels doesn’t help as much as I think it should.

We grow closer and closer. It feels like we’ve started dating to me, and a knot in my stomach says I’ll have to bring it up with you at some point. But the pro/con list I made about it tells me it would be best to bring that up after the whole thing with the river reaches whatever conclusion we’re crawling towards.

I also feel more and more scattered and impaired. Things are falling apart because I can’t ever clear my head of you and that damn river. It wouldn’t be so bad if I could just talk to my friends about it, but I feel like it’d be talking to them about voices in my head or some kind of phantom only I can see. They won’t get it, or they’ll think I’m crazy, or worst of all they’ll try to help. This is my fight. Our fight, not theirs. And even if they could help, what if the river got to them too?

Dimly, I can tell they’re worried about me. And training half the night while sleepwalking the other half—even if it’s only from your hut—is taking it’s tole. When it started I would sleepwalk maybe a few times a week, but now it’s every day. And the circles under my eyes aren’t lost on them I’m sure as I make another excuse out of meaningless noises to mollify them into letting me take a nap in the middle of the afternoon.

I can feel it. As we train today, I can feel it stirring. Something is coming, the breaking point, the hurricane, the other side of the river…. It would have me scared, but fear is a useless emotion to me now.

I fall off the pole after an exemplary three minutes on one hoof, and you open your eyes to look at me.

“You’re more stressed than usual Twilight. Do you feel alright?”

“Yes. Maybe. I don’t know. I think it’s coming soon. Something is. And I feel like I’m not ready yet.”

“Let’s go faith walking again. I want to try something new today.”

We head out to the little pond, and you jump right down onto it like you do everyday. Then look back up at me.

“Remember. Keep your head clear. Let the water be solid. Focus your energy and your intent into the bottom of your hooves. Make your body believe it will hold you, and the mana of the pond will make it so.”

“Right.” I scowl down at it and I’m just about to jump in, when you pull up onto the little ledge and kiss me on the cheek. Then immediately slap my ass and I lurch out instinctively.

My mind is blank as I fall. I can’t believe what happened just happened. I don’t know where my hooves are, where the pond is, I just know that I’m falling and that you kissed me. And just before I hit, my subconscious takes over and braces my legs like I’ve been training.

My hooves slam awkwardly into something solid and I fall onto my face. See that it’s the water as I try to scramble up, but just as I get back onto all fours my focus breaks.

I fall right in and get soaked horn to tail. But I don’t care, I have so many emotions buzzing around inside me, I just need to know— “Zecora!” I shout as I thrash the water and climb out. “I did it you kissed me I did it!”

You’re laughing, and that beautiful noise is real enough for me. You hold out your forelegs for me to smash into you with a gross, wet hug.

“You kissed me, on the cheek but still! Are we—” suddenly it hits me that maybe we’re not dating and you were just trying to surprise me. Maybe that’s all it was. “—are you…”

“Twilight, I have something to ask you.”

“Anything.”

“Will you go out with me?”

“Oh Celestia yes!” I don’t know if I should kiss you or what, I didn’t spend much time planning out this contingency because I thought I haven’t had the time, and you pull me down so our faces are side by side and we’re only hugging. I’ll kiss you eventually, and I’ll kiss you so much.

Then you push me off and throw your hooves out at the pond, still rippling from the splashes. “And you did it, Twilight! You faith walked.”

“I did. I did! It was only for a second, but, when you kissed me, I just froze up and went blank and I had it in the back of my mind what I was supposed to do and that it was a solid surface because you were just standing on it… I did it.” Something wild pulses around my eyes as I look at you but I don’t know what. I can feel it. Beating. Pounding. “I can make it across the river.”

“Yes you can. Make sure you can hold out first, you wouldn’t want to fall in half way there.”

“Oh, right yeah.” I start giggling. I have a marefriend. I haven’t had a romantic partner my entire life, but now I have you. I jump down onto the water and believe that it will be solid.

But I splash right in. “What? But I already did it. I don’t know what I did wrong.”

“Think hard Twilight. Were you focusing?”

I blush. You know I was thinking about you. “No.”

I try again. And again and again and manage to get it on the last jump because I’m so frustrated that I can finally stop thinking about the way your lips gently moved on my cheek.

The water feels not like ice, but like a sheet of tilted plastic under my hooves, that I might slide off of even though it’s as level as anything can be. I tap on it, and then look back to you. “Why does it feel so—woah!” I fall in again.

Climbing out, you put a foreleg over me and laugh. “Huhuhuh, it’s okay Twilight. Now that you’ve done it once it will get much easier. You fell in just now because you lost concentration.”

“Right. It feels weird to stand on. Like if I’m not careful I’ll send a hoof through it. It’s brittle. And unbalanced.”

“That will change as you develop better skill at it. To me, the ujasiri is as firm and level as the ground we stand on now.”

“Hmm.” We’re done training for the day. I need to get back to Ponyville. But I want to stay here forever with you. I open my mouth to say something, but you speak first.

“I’m going into the market today to buy some food. Would you like to come?”

“I’d love that. What time?”

“About three or so.”

“Then it’s a date.” I smile so wide that I know I look stupid but you smile too. Scrunch your eyes up in happiness and nod.

“I suppose it is.”

I teleport into my room and look down the hall. Applejack is there for some reason, looking my way.

She shouts, “I found her!”

Uh oh. I haven’t even showered yet and I can hear the lot of ponies coming up. The thundering of hooves clatters down a surreal soundscape on me. Rainbow dash is into the hallway first, then the others file in, Starlight and Spike in the lead. “Hey guys,” I say, shakily, keeping the door half closed.

“Twilight,” Spike says, “we need to talk to you.”

“I’m actually kind of busy at the moment, maybe--”

“You’ve been busy for weeks. And acting strange and even today you’re covered in mud!”

“Oh, well,” I open the door all the way. “I guess so.”

“Guess so?” Applejack says, “Twilight there’s something wrong an’ we want to know what. We’re worried about you.”

Starlight says, “You disappear at random points in the day, and reappear at others, we’ve barely spent any time on my friendship studies, and when we are together you look like you’re about to pass out.”

“We want to know what’s going on. Please?” Fluttershy said.

“I, well, it’s a bit personal.”

“Personal? Come on egghead,” Rainbow says, flying up to me and stretching out my forelegs. “It was personal until you started getting mysterious bruises all over. And missing our picnics and spa days. You’re almost never even late to those things.”

“Well, I, uh.” It looks like I don’t have a way out. I sigh, and let my wings droop to the floor. “Alright, I’ll tell you. Will you let me shower first?”

All of them nod. I walk down the hallway and feel their eyes on me as they follow behind. Starlight comes up as I open the bathroom door, and says softly, “Please Twilight. Trixie came over and I don’t think you even noticed.”

“Trixie? Really? I… alright, I guess I have been stretching myself a bit thin. I’ll tell you after I shower okay? I promise.”

“Be fast.” Rainbow says.

I nod at her and close the door behind me. The walls feel frail. I need to think. I need to decide how to tell them that I’ve been going crazy and also falling in love with you for the past month or so. It’s going to be a hard talk. And it needs to be over by three because I need to meet you in the market. My eyes flick up to the clock on the wall while the water roaring down from the shower head heats up. It’s only seven twenty. This is going to be a long day.

Ch.7 - Crashing Upwards

Freshly showered and dried, I open the door to see Rainbow Dash waiting with a wing over Fluttershy, who’s nestled into her neck. They notice me.

“Come on, Pinkie’s baking something sweet and Rarity’s making tea in the common room,” Rainbow says.

“Okay.”

While I walk with them, Fluttershy matches my stride and says, “Twilight, I hope we didn’t come off as too forceful, but we really are worried about you.”

“No, it’s alright Fluttershy. I needed to tell you all sometime.” I think that’s true.

We come into the room, and chairs have been pulled out onto the floor in a close circle. On the coffee table Rarity has stood up a teapot with a small candle under it to keep it warm. She levitates me a cup and I take it into my own magic.

They sit in a circle, and look at me expectantly. I gulp some tea and wince as it burns my mouth. But it doesn’t matter. “I’m sorry I’ve made you all worry so much,” I start, genuinely sad that I’ve let myself make them so upset. “For a while now something has been happening and it’s kind of scared me. I felt like it was too deep inside a part of me to tell you girls about. And I apologize for that.”

“We accept your apology.” Fluttershy says. I smile at her.

“What is it? Do you have butt cancer or an evil twin sister or what!” Pinkie shouts.

“I’ve been sleepwalking.”

“Is that all?”

“No, Pinkie, there’s more. Starlight, I’m sorry that I told you I had a rash and sleepwalking was a side effect of the treatment. And that I was starting a garden, and all of the other excuses I gave. I’m not gardening, and I don’t have any rashes.”

“I never did actually see that garden. Is that why you didn’t want to come to our sleepovers, because you knew you would sleepwalk?”

“Partly. It started out only happening a few times a week, but then it happened more and more and more until now it’s every day. I go to sleep, and I wake up having walked into the Everfree.”

“The Everfree?” Spike asks, “You can’t sleep walk in there, you could die!” Fluttershy nods rapidly, and I shake my head.

The conversation wears on, dissipating through time like drips of ink into the ocean. I tell them all about how I end up at the river every night, about the missing part of me that’s on the other side. My mouth spills out all my attempts to get across, the river’s immunity to any of my spells. And it gives out how I’m training with you, and how you’re teaching me Zebrican magic, but I leave out our cuddling and your kiss and our new relationship. I’m not quite ready to have that out there yet; it only half feels like it really happened now that I’m not standing next to you.

I answer a few of their questions and finish the story up to finally walking on water for the first time. A moment passes by in quiet. “I don’t know, do you girls think I’m crazy?”

“What? No, of course not.” Applejack says, “How many times have we all gotten strung along on some crazy magical thing? This time I guess it just happened only to you.”

“She’s right Twilight. When do you think you’ll be able to walk across?” Starlight asks.

“I don’t know. I hope soon. Zecora said now that I’ve done it once, I should be able to make faster progress.”

“It’s astounding, Twilight. May we come to see you off?” Rarity asks.

“Oh, uh.” I can’t believe I didn’t think about this. They all look at me so full of expectation and worry. I gulp the last of my tea, and put the cup down on the coffee table. I still feel weird, like I’m letting them into my very soul. But as I think back over the years we’ve spent together, over every little thing that we’ve done for each other, I realize that’s what friends are for. I should have done this sooner. At the very least, I can try to make up for being so absent for nearly a month. “I’d love to have you all there, if you’re willing to come into the Everfree with me. I don’t think it’ll be much to look at, but it’ll be nice to have you girls waiting for me when I come back. I’m sorry again that I lied to all of you about it.”

“Of course we’ll come to the Everfree with you,” Rainbow says, “and whatever happens we’ll be ready. If you need to fight off giant creatures that stole your whatever, we can take them.” She threw some punches at the air, and smiled back at me.

“Thank you all, really. I know I missed a lot of life for a while, and we’re all here now, so, what’s been going on? How are you all doing?”

Starlight spoke, “Besides one of my friends is being summoned to a river in the Everfree? I think I’m doing okay.”

They trickle out around one, and I’m ready for a nap. Starlight wants to keep talking, and follows me as I walk to my room.

“I’m gonna take a nap, Starlight, before I go out to the market.”

“Oh, are you going to buy food? I can help, I can make a grocery list while you sleep.”

I turn to her at my door and smile. She looks at me expectantly. “That sounds great Starlight. In fact, Zecora will be there so you two can finally meet.”

“Oh yeah, that’ll be good.”

“Alright, I’ll see you then.” I step inside and close the door. My breath pushes out all at once and my wings sprawl to the floor. I’m climbing in bed when the door creeks open and Starlight pokes her head in.

“Hey Twilight, uh, is there anything I should know about talking to zebras?”

“Haha, no. She’s just like everyone else. Mostly, anyway. Just be yourself and be friendly. Oh, and Zecora speaks in rhymes but you don’t have to respond like that.”

“Oh. Okay, thank you.”

I wave her away and slip into bed. Set a timer on my desk for an hour and a half and close my eyes. If I fell asleep right away I would have time to complete a full REM cycle. And if the world stopped existing I wouldn’t be tired anymore. I’m still awake under the covers and the dark for at least a half hour, my head full with thoughts of you and the river. I wonder what my friends will see. I wonder if it’ll just be a normal volume of water for them. I wonder if things will ever feel comfortable again. Eventually I managed to push all of that aside and meditate as I slowly creep toward sleep.

As we near the market, I scan for you in the crowds. You’re a little ways off, standing by yourself, frowning, with all of your gold circles and bangles back on. I wave at you, and your face brightens, trotting up.

“Hello Twilight, and Starlight I see. Have you both come to shop with me?”

Now that I know what rhyming means to you, it makes me sad that you’re doing it again, even though I knew you would. But I try to look unphased and say, “Yep. I told Starlight and the others about the river, and Starlight wanted to come along to meet you.” We lock eyes. I can’t tell what you’re thinking.

“It’s nice to meet you, Zecora.” Starlight sticks out her hoof. “I... like your ear rings.”

You chuckle, shake her hoof, and we start walking down to look through the vendors and buy some food more palatable and varied than just backyard grass. Which for some reason I suddenly remember eating, back when I was in Canterlot and would shut myself in for days or weeks just to read. It feels at once a lifetime and only a few days ago.

We come to a display of tomatoes with a gap between it and the bell pepper stall next door where kites poke out from the horizon, tethered to the park in the distance by invisible strings. As we get in line for tomatoes Starlight runs over to the gap to kite gaze.

“Look at them today! Good old orange checkers is still flying even after what happened last week, wow. What a trooper.”

You turn to me and whisper, “You told them about the river?”

“Yes. I’ve been kind of out it for the past few weeks and I just realized I owed it to them to say what was going on.”

“I am glad you found your strength. Did you tell them I stopped rhyming? Or that we’re dating?” You look anxious and I want to pull you close and tell you that I will do anything for you.

“No, I didn’t. I figured we want to take your time with this, and I didn’t want to put you on the spot.”

“Thank you Twilight. I want to tell them myself.”

Words spill out of me without thinking, “You speak so confidently, Zecora. I love your voice. You never use any filler words like ‘um’ or ‘ah’ it all just flows so confidently. I guess part of that is from your magic practice.” I realize the point I can make, and gently rub you with the side of my head for just a brief second. “I think they’ll love to hear you speaking in prose.”

A low giggle mumbles out of you; you’re smiling again. “I hope so.”

As we leave the market, saddle bags weighed down with food and a few other things, you ask me if I want to train the rest of the day before nightfall. I look to Starlight.

“Oh go ahead. The sooner you get over that river the better. I’ll put our groceries up and see you when you get home.”

“Well, actually, I might just sleep wi—at Zecora’s. Since it’s closer to the river and all, you know, less distance to sleepwalk.”

“Oh, okay. I guess I’ll see you in the morning?”

“Definitely. Thank you, Starlight.”

“Yeah, of course. Goodbye, Zecora.”

“Goodbye for a while Starlight, I hope you have a pleasant night.”

“Thanks.”

We part ways with her. As we near the Everfree forest, nerves start quivering through my stomach. I don’t know what to say to you all of a sudden. And the quiet feels weird.

“Did I offend you?” I blurt out, walking over roots and avoiding rocks. “Are we okay?”

“What? Twilight, no. It is good you told your friends. I shouldn’t have let this get to my head. I am more nervous to stop rhyming around them than I thought.”

“Zecora, you have a lovely voice. I’m sure they’ll understand.”

“It has become such a part of my character, I fear they won’t know me anymore.”

“It might take a while to get used to, but we like you for you, not for your speech pattern. ...Are you nervous about telling them we’re dating too? I am.”

“Yes, that as well.”

We get to your hut and I help you put away groceries. We talk some more. I want to pour out my heart all over you but I don’t know how. So it just dribbles slowly from my mouth as we drink tea. And I want to soak up every part of you into me. But I can’t. I have to listen and piece it together and ask you questions and talk. And we talk so much that it’s already seven o’clock by the time we actually get to training.

It’s harder to focus than I thought. To keep my mind empty. You tell me I can’t think about the water as water, I have to think about it as a solid. I have to believe it is a solid. When I ask for the hundredth time how you do it, you tell me how you can keep your mind empty of thoughts of the water while thinking without words of other things. Your faith in it’s ability to be walked on so deep seated at that point that you don’t need to think about it, just like I don’t need to think about how the dirt will hold me up.

I just have to forget the water exists at all. I have to trick my body into forgetting that it is there. The ultimate mind over matter exercise.

I can hold out for a few seconds by the time we finish, and all of a sudden I feel confident that I can do this. That the river will not beat me.

We cuddle through the night again, but don’t kiss. It feels weird. After all of our communication, all of the letters we’ve written to each other and all of the touches with our hooves and our bodies and all of the hours we’ve talked, it feels like I’m still distant. There’s something still holding me back.

You can tell. I think it’s the missing piece. I’m not ready for you, that’s why I wasn’t going to ask you out until after this. You know I need to get this over with first. But I can still push my nose to your chest and breath in deep. You smell so good; so warm and real and clean.

I wake up at the river, standing next to you. I try to clear my mind. I don’t want to walk back. I want to walk forward, over the surface, into the calling clouds. I put one hoof on the water, and then another. I’m out by about a meter when I break and crash into the current. I swim back and spit out some water. For a river of magic and destiny, it tastes like dirt and rotting organics.

You match my stride as we start walking back. “You are getting close, Twilight. Perhaps the next night. Now that you’ve started faith walking, it will become easier very fast.”

I nod. The water has soaked cold through to my soul. “It’s like I’m reaching for something that’s just of grasp; I’m about to finish a book when someone tears out the last pages, it’s a spell that I just can’t make work for some reason! I’ve never been so vexed my entire life.”

You rub my withers for a moment, and we train for the rest of the day. I can’t think about you anymore. I can’t think about anything but the river; the muck in my mane and the taste in my mouth burn into me. I have to do this. I have to do this. I have to kill this thing before it kills me.

Seven o’clock rolls around but I don’t want to head back to the castle. I don’t want to do anything anymore but train. I pretend to leave, and then teleport back to the river’s edge to try walking out again. I know I can’t make it all the way, so I walk a few steps out and then start moving parallel to the shore, going upstream.

I make it about three meters. I need more. The fog starts up maybe twenty away, and it’s got to be a few more out than that, because it doesn’t look like the water gets any shallower from what I can see. I figure forty meters, but it could be kilometers for all I know.

I keep walking. Every time I fall in I get more frustrated; the forest on my right grumbles with life and I feel like I could bite the heads off any creatures that dare come out to attack me.

Ch.8 - Induction

The water-walking has drained all of my energy by what’s maybe three o’clock. I sit down for just a moment to rest. The next thing I know, you’re shaking me awake.

“Twilight!” You say, panic pulling your eyes wide. I push my head up slowly. Everypony’s here. “Are you okay, have you been here all day?”

You and the others are standing around me in a semicircle. Starlight holds three lanterns in her magic, which fade a gold light into the piercing dark. The moon hangs new in the sky, and the stars hide behind feeble clouds. You and all of them look quietly terrified. I stretch out and lay my face back on the mud. It feels like I’m still alone; the only two things that are anymore are the river and you. “I’m sorry guys. I just got so close, I lost my patience. I can walk pretty far now, but I don’t know how far I need to go. It could be kilometers, it could take days just to get to the other side! What if this isn’t a river but an ocean, what if I never make it across?”

“You will find the other side.” You say, pulling me up out of my misery muck. “From your destiny you can not hide.”

I sigh. My muscles ache and my empty stomach hungers along with the hole in my soul. Pinkie glomps onto me and rubs into the cleaner side of my face. “You’ll get there, you’re Twilight Sparkle!”

“Thanks Pinkie.”

“How far’d you say you can walk?” Applejack asks.

“I don’t know, not far enough.”

“How close to the fog did ya get?”

“I just walked with the shore, I was just training.”

Starlight asks, “Then how do you know you can’t make it to the other side if you haven’t even tried yet?”

“Well...”

Rarity says, “We can come back in the morning, darling, after a shower and a meal. Maybe you’re ready for it.”

“...alright. Lets go eat.”

We head to your hut, so I can melt the slab of mud off my left side. I don’t know why I never showered at your place before now, besides just not wanting to come back into your hut after training for fear of tracking too much mud inside. Your shower head and bathtub are cast bronze; heavy pieces of metallic warmth gleaming somewhere between gold and chocolate. The sheen eats through the cloudy streams that trickle down to the drain, rendering them only semi-opaque.

I remember your water silo and the trouble you had with it a while ago. In our letters, you talked about rebuilding one of the supporting legs that had been taken out by a timberwolf brawl. I sent you a new bubble level and a book on carpentry that week. I wish I had come down and helped you out directly. I can’t break the feeling that at any moment the water will cut off and we’ll find the silo smashed again. Not because of shoddy craftsmanship but because it was never rebuilt in the first place. This tub itself is already pushing it with how shiny it is. Any minute now, if I grew just a little more crazy, if the river called just a little harder, it would cease to exist and I’d be here over a drain on the floor. Or maybe the house itself would go with it; debris falling into the void….

These thoughts are useless. I finish washing and shut the water off.

You’ve cooked up a mushroom stew, filled with plenty of rice and corn in with the savory broth and chunks of mushroom. It’s good. You all talk but I can’t really tell what you’re saying. Words tumble out of my mouth but I can’t remember what they were once they’ve left. In a blink I’ve eaten and I’m so tired and stuffed that I lay my head down and fall asleep on the floor between you and Applejack.

At the river again. My head still isn’t clear, but I can at least make sense of what you’re saying now.

“It is three twenty, and we are here for you. It is your time to do what you must do.” You say, putting one hoof against my ribs.

I look at my other side to see half the girls, Applejack frets closest to me. Then to you; everypony else behind you and your gorgeous teal eyes. You nod solemnly, but with a peaceful upward tinge on your lips and slight crease of your brow.

You believe in me; the thought presses a trickle of hope into my mind. “Thank you, Zecora. Thank you, everypony, if I can’t make it then I’ll just swim back. We can try again later.”

“You can do this, Twilight, you can cross the river tonight.”

My mouth trembles. I nod, and let the quiet settle into my intestines.

I put one hoof on the water. It holds; the ujasiri feels less brittle than it did when I started, but even more off balance now. Like my weight is the only thing keeping it from being toppled over. It’s one side of a lever, a seesaw; the next step is a table missing a leg, the next the tops of loose marbles.

Quavering. I can’t loose focus. The fog creeps closer. I can hear you and the girls behind me, hushed but excited.

The fog licks over me. It eats the lantern light as my heart races. This is it. Adrenaline courses through me, devoid of fear this time. There’s nothing to see by anymore, but I don’t dare light my horn.

A pinprick glows far away. It crawls closer and closer, my breath rages out and in from shaking heaves; the air smells of salt and copper, my hooves tremble as they pick up speed despite me, legs moving on their own now, across something solid, cracking out clacks that don’t echo back as I gallop, I sprint, I have to get to the light that’s bigger and stronger, spreading out and gaining color—

Suddenly I’m there. I’m galloping over a plane of marble, with a marble ceiling high above. I slow down. The horizon is flat and unyielding. I whirl around hoping to see what I came through, but it’s only more marble floor stretching out endlessly. I can’t even tell where the light is coming from; it’s just diffused through everything.

I’m about to start freaking out because I’m alone with no way back, but then a voice right behind me says, “Hello Twilight Sparkle.”

I whirl around and see a pony at least four times my height. She looks down from her long neck and tall legs. She has no mane, no tail that I can see. I think her coat is a brownish peach until I realize her skin stretches furless over muscles and bone, giving them incredible depth. There are no wings on her side, no horn on her head. It rushes out of me before I can trap it in my mouth, “God?”

Her brown eyes bore into my soul and her power ripples through me; I am but a leaf in her wind. “No. Closer to an angel, at most. You have wondered before why Celestia and Luna, Cadence and yourself are the head of the monarchy but only labeled as Princesses. I, Twilight Sparkle, am the Queen.”

I open my mouth. Silence tumbles out.

“Do not be afraid,” she says as she leans down, her squarish muzzle gaining the mottled texture of skin, the veins in her hairless ears shining ruby streaks through the amber backing, her imperfect, immaculate teeth glimmering like mother of pearl as she opens her mouth and bites straight through my neck.

The severed head thumps onto the ground; the rest of my body collapsed below me. I feel numb. I stare past my hooves at the bloody mess below. Step aside and circle it; it happened so suddenly that I didn’t have time to be afraid. The body on the ground is me, but it’s the old me. The horn is shorter, the barrel has no wings attached. My face is more stubby-looking than I’m used too. “You killed me?” I ask, voice whispering out.

“A part of you. You no longer are who you once were. Come here. I want to show you something.” She sits and stretches out a hoof. I walk forward and tap it with my own, and energy surges through me.

Then I dissolve into an incomprehensible experience. I can only feel different things happening. I recognize patterns, energy leaving me and going into small bodies in a bubble, chains coming together and matter moving around, longer chains unzipping…

The Queen melts into my vision again as the experience fades. She sets her hoof down and asks, “Did you understand that?”

My mind races over the odd feelings. “I’m sorry, no. I don’t know what any of that was.”

“I showed you that so you will know that I am the Queen of life. I sprout the seeds and grow the trees; I will everything, every protein, acid, lipid; organelle to do their jobs in every cell of every living thing. You felt us supporting only one cell during mitosis.”

I stare. Her eyes look like rims of burnt sienna glowing around black holes; shining chocolate and black walnut. “You’re— you’re biology itself!”

She smiles, and nods. “I am the keeper, the Queen, of biology. Of course it is more complicated than that vision showed you, mostly I give energy and the cells respond as they need to.”

“You do that for every cell on the planet?”

“Yes, it is a vast experience. Now, Twilight, do you know why I called you here?”

“No.”

“You are an Alicorn now. But you have yet to realize your full potential as the Princess of Friendship.”

I look down at the sloping muscles of her chest so I can avoid her eyes. “Yes. I’m sorry, I just—”

“It is not your fault. Celestia ascended you, but she did not grant you your full powers. Only the body and magic of an alicorn. This Twilight,” she held up a hoof and gestured to the odd world we inhabited in the moment, spurring me to look back and see my dead self again, “is the rest of your induction.”

I lock eyes with her. “I don’t understand.”

“You have felt like there is a piece missing. Some part of you that you lost. And it will never come back. A sliver of your soul has died. It was never lost but decaying inside of you, rotting more with every day; I have pruned it for you.”

“The old me? That’s what was holding me back?”

“Yes. Your life has changed much and you need to accept this. You were surprised by these new-found responsibilities and your identity as a princess is in direct opposition to the pony you used to be. Mourn for it if you must, but let it die in peace. You will never be her again.”

I tremble, the craziness of the situation wearing off a bit. “But I don’t know how to be a princess, and I’m barely even doing anything—”

“That is going to change. I called you from the Everfree partly because I wanted to set you up with Zecora. If you two had spoken sooner this would’ve taken much less time. The yaks and the leader of the dragons have become allies, the changeling kingdom has been reborn as friends. Even the griffins have begun social reform beneficial to Equestria. Zecora can show you Zebrica, and you will bring warm relations to many more lands. You will spearhead a new era of interspecies peace. This is your true purpose, to befriend the nations we have so long struggled against.”

“But. But I don’t know how to do that, I don’t know how to be a political leader.”

“You will learn fast. And you know much already. You are well studied in almost everything, and you can plan for hundreds of contengiences. You could learn an entire culture in a few weeks if you needed too, as well as strategize well in the event of war. You have gained great understanding of friendship and interpersonal connections. Your knowledge of magic and science will allow you to keep a level head and give you the tools you need to quell any hostility, as well as ingratiate you to other educated rulers. Your experience as a normal citizen will keep you humble and give you a clear perspective. The only thing you are missing, Twilight, is confidence. You must trust yourself.”

I stare down at my fetlocks. It’s not reassuring at all to hear that. I feel the tip of one massive hoof graze my shoulder. No vision comes from it, but it comforts me a little.

“Twilight.”

“Yes.”

“You are not the new ruler of Equestria. That position still sits with Celestia. You are an ambassador, a diplomat, Twilight. Your mistakes will not be irreparable. I realize you do not want this responsibility, but it has chosen you, Twilight. You must rise to meet it.”

I nod. And then catch on to something she’s said, “You set me up with Zecora? Did you make us fall in—well—did you make me have a crush on her?”

“Your deeper relationship with her was catalyzed by me, but it is still your prerogative. I can not see the future, Twilight, nor do I create it.”

“Why the Everfree? Why sleepwalking? Why not just pluck me out of the world one day?”

“I have my limits as well, Twilight. I can experience every cell that is, but outside of them I have little control. Think of it like a book. You can read about that world, and write things about that world, but you can not inhabit it. You can not pull the characters from the page into physical existence with you. That is the challenge I face; the Everfree is wild and the weakest point to puncture into. The most I could do was force it to send my call to you, and create the portal myself. I am holding open a slit through water for you, with my bare hooves. The magic Zecora taught you helped greatly, that was another reason I chose the Everfree. I am also hoping she will introduce you to Zebrica.”

“Alright. Okay. What about Celestia and Luna? Do they know you? What about Cadence and Flurry Heart?”

“I inducted Celestia so long ago that she does not think of it much anymore. I re-inducted Luna after her imprisonment on the moon, you can talk to her about me if you want. Cadence and Flurry Heart I have yet to call.”

“Luna knows about all of this?”

“Yes. If you had been open about what was happening, she might have helped guide you.”

“Oh.” My cheeks burn a bit. Everything feels silly all of a sudden. And while I think over it all I remember the night I tried to quell my sleepwalking by masturbating nine times in a row before I went to sleep. “If you can feel everthing, uh, when I… you know.”

“Yes, I keep your cells able to produce hormones for your libido. I have had millenia to experience masturbation, Twilight, do not be embarrassed.”

“Right. Well.” I cast my eyes around the odd world we inhabit, searching for a new subject. “Where are we right now?”

“I created this space for us to meet. We are in a world, dimension if you want, above yours, Twilight, closer to the genesis of reality. I have friends here, I eat, drink, and am merry here.”

“There are others? Can I meet them?”

“While my existence has become a secret by chance, I can not show you the rest of my world; we do not have time. I am still holding open the portal; there is life withering while we talk because I must focus so much of my energy here.”

I cast my eyes out over the endless plane. I want to see what’s out there, I want to explore and find the exit to this crazy place she describes, but I know I would never make it out. I comb back through her words, trying to think through everything she’s said to me. There’s two things left to ask.

“I have two more questions. One, and I don’t mean this in a bad way, why are you bald?”

She bursts out laughing, a noise that spills out in beats and crashes through the air like an accordion. I smile, only a little afraid that I’ve offended her. She stops laughing after a moment, but keeps this doofy grin on her face below her brilliant eyes, and for the first time she looks pony. She rubs her naked forelegs together and says, “Why should I have fur?”

I surprise myself by not really having an answer to this, after everything that’s happened.

“Here, feel me.”

She bends down and presents the crown of her head. I stretch out a hoof and rub behind her ears. It’s smooth and odd, and feels like I might cut through it if I’m not careful.

I take my hoof off, and she leans back up, looking pleased with herself. “Smooth, right? It’s so much more sensitive too.”

“Right. It looks like it would be. I have one last question—a more serious question. Please, I need to know, will I die?”

Her smile falls back to it’s neutral, professional expression. “The other alicorns, as with you, are not truly invincible. You will never die from old age, and can take heavy bodily damage. But your soul is vulnerable to spiritual magic, and there is a physical limit. The direct destruction of the brain or heart can be fatal.”

“Wow. I always thought she and Luna were indestructible. So they can die, we can die. How long will it be before then? I mean—it’s going to happen, right? There’s a possibility I get poisoned with neurotoxin or stabbed through the heart. Is it certain, that it’ll happen, you know, naturally? Or will I have to… to work for it?”

“All things, in both our worlds, die eventually, Twilight sparkle. None of our magic can outrun entropy forever, even if it seems so. You will die one day. It will take a long time, I think. Perhaps millenia.”

I look back at the muscles slabbed down her legs, some large veins clearly visible and gently pulsing, and purse my lips. It’s a bittersweet thing. But I am glad I know that it will come, even if I have to be more patient for it than I want to.

“I know you are worried about the afterlife. I can offer you a glimpse of the other side. It will take little time.”

“What?” I pull my head back up to her eyes.

“I control the matter that gives you life, but your soul is out of my hooves. It’s farther on, Twilight, far from any of us here. Lie down please.”

Motionless trembling aches in my legs. I lie on my side and keep my eyes up at her’s. She lifts one massive hoof and lets it down on my shoulder, above the heart. I feel that pound of flesh stop beating. It’s heavy inside like a ball of gold lodged under my ribcage. Slowly things start to fade. I tumble through black until—

Ch.9 - Baptism

Suddenly I’m not me anymore. I’m above myself, high above, and drifting upward. I can see the Queen’s back, the vertebrae in her spine just visibly pressing out of her skin, myself sprawled below her.

A light above me, brighter than anything I’ve ever seen. Champagne silver like polished zirconium, so bright I should be blind but it doesn’t hurt.

I’m traveling to it, faster and faster, there’s no frame of reference but the momentum building in me, I feel like a bullet or a photon myself, faster and faster and faster.

I reach the other side. There’s a being here; I feel a presence. Like an old friend I never knew I had, a sibling I forgot I grew up with. And I am filled with love. Peace and joy steep inside me, love soaks down to every fiber of me. I’m giddy with it, filled with energy and pure unending love and acceptance.

My life unfolds out from me in one; everything at once and all of it comprehensible. I feel my tongue scalding on the first cup of coffee I ever tasted, though the pain is not upsetting; I feel the magic bursting wings from my back as Celestia transforms me into an alicorn, hear the girls talking to me as I see you for the first time, smell the smoke and dust as Golden Oaks explodes, see the moon crawling into the sky the night after Luna’s return, feel the quill in my magic as I write you a letter, feel my legs move as I sleepwalk and my heart race when you find me.

I feel no judgment for any of it, not for the times I was bad or the times I was good. It’s all drenched in love, everything is. I am loved despite all of the mistakes I’ve made and all of the time I’ve wasted.

I am without a body anymore, but it takes me a minute to realize it. I am still myself, but I am more pure. Cleaner, stronger, like I’ve been diluted all my life in Equestria and this has distilled me back into my true form. The light stretches out into infinity, I feel it’s boundlessness and I am at once a part of it. I am limitless into the light and the being.

Hello Twilight.

The greeting comes not as words but as pure thoughts. Voiceless intent. It feels more real than anything I’ve ever felt before, it feels like I’ve finally woken up. It comes out of me, Yes.

You are a good pony. I know you have many questions.

Yes, yes I do, I want to know everything about everything. And I want to know how I’m supposed to know what to do. When I leave I’m going to be afraid again. How do I know what I should do, who I should be? How to be the ambassador, the leader of friendship?

I will tell you that your life is important. You are here in Equestria to learn, Twilight. To learn about love and friendship. Love, in all it’s forms, is what matters in life. You are here to help one another, to love one another. Remember to love. You are gifted with free will, and you must choose what to do with it. So long as you choose to love, you will flourish.

I will come back here, won’t I?

Yes.

I love you.

I love you as well. I know you want to stay. You have yet to love your fullest, Twilight. You have yet to lead who you need to. It is not your time, though it is very good to see you.

...God?

You may call me that.

Thank you.

You are very welcome, Twilight Sparkle.

Things start to fade. I can feel myself picking up speed again, the momentum pooling backwards as if I’m falling, leaving the love and the peace and slipping back into the dreamyness of regular reality.

I can see again. I’m in the marble plane. The Queen takes her hoof off of me, and my heart stings as it beats.

“It might hurt a bit. Do you feel better?”

I smile. I feel like smiling. I want to dance and yell and laugh and explode with joy.

“You look better.”

“Yes.” I stand up, tingling all over.

She presses one hoof onto my withers. “Remember what I told you.”

“I will.”

“I have full faith in you. You will be a great pony. Use your new powers wisely.”

“Powers?”

“It’s all inside you already. It will come naturally.”

“Okay. I trust you.” Confidence and determination swell in my chest, despite myself.I want to do this. I want to make her proud, and I want to run back to you to tell you all about it.

“Are you ready to go back?”

“Yes.”

“Welcome to alicornhood, Princess Twilight Sparkle.”

“Thank you, Queen—wait what’s your name?”

“Globin. Goodbye.”

She pushes down hard and I smash through the floor. I freefall through the marble, burning needles pierce through the skin along my mane and tail, some lump of energy spikes through my brain and my horn, everything stretches and burns inside—

My lungs decompress suddenly and I’m flailing through the air.

I splash into the river, and surface with my mouth full of water and my eyes burning.

“Twilight!” you and all the girls call. I swim to you, and dimly notice it feels like my legs are longer than usual. But I can’t focus on anything but your face, your beautiful concerned face.

I grin ear to ear, unable and unwilling to contain it as I slip trying to run the last distance to you, and tackle everyone I can reach into a hug. This place is so strange and otherworldfully wonderful now. I focus myself on you, your joyous, beautiful face, and pull you into my forelegs through everyone else. I feel like I can see your soul in your deep, brilliantly blue eyes, like I’m asking permission to join you in there. Or you with me, but it doesn’t matter because we’ll be together. And I can feel you lean forward, then hesitate, but I’m already pressing my lips against yours. I hear everyone gasp and giggle in surprise, as we kiss and you pull your forelegs around my neck. I know it’s not good, it’s my first kiss and I don’t know what I’m doing at all, but I can tell that you do. And damn you feel good, and oh my Celestia I’ve never tasted somepony’s lips before it’s so weird and new and amazing.

We part after a moment, and I’m still thinking about you, about all of you as a zebra, when I feel magic involuntarily stir inside me. The words of the spell ring from a language I don’t speak, the focus and mental parameters I need to cast it come from nowhere and are similar only to the spells I used once to raise the sun and moon. It comes from nowhere and everywhere at once; like it was carved onto my bones and wound inside my flesh.

Halos light over your head. I can see them even through your face, which is simultaneously unobstructed by them. An impulse flashes to me and I can almost read them. The strips and crashes of color, the spinning and the points where some bands sever themselves for a gap of air, it’s all you, your personality, represented in twenty different glittering ways. It must be the rest of my power.

Pinkie slams into us, I catch a glimpse of the rings burning fuchsia over her before the sudden motion breaks my spell. She pours her happy out in wild squeals, “AaaaaAH, you’re dating! I’m going to throw you a dating party—NO a double date with Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash! And Twilight, you’re so tall now! And--”

“Darling, your mane!”

I crane my chin around to see what I can of my mane, then flip my tail around and look at it too. It’s become flowing and ethereal, just like the royal sisters’ manes. It’s deep purple with streaks of violet and hot pink that melt into a band of sunrise orange running through the wine-dark like dusk peering through clouds. A coppery sheen streaks over it all and catches the light from the lanterns. I’m sitting on a piece of evening sky.

I look back up and laugh. The spell is still inside me. I’ll have to investigate it later. “We should move back to Zecora’s hut, where it’s safer.”

“Do you feel better?” Applejack asks. She’s such a sweetheart. I pull her over and squeeze her tight.

“I do. I’ll talk about it while we walk. Zecora,” I turn back to your grinning face and ask you, “Is it okay if I do something?”

Intrigued and completely on board, you say, “Yes of course, what is it you beautiful horse?”

I maneuver around you, trembling on my legs that are at least two hooves longer than they used to be, then slide my head under your rump, stepping forward and pushing up so you fall down on my back. “I want to carry you home.”

You hug me tight, and with you kindling such a warmth in my chest, we all start forward. I don’t need it, but I cast light from my horn like Rarity and Starlight are doing. Fluttershy, on my left, asks, “So what happened? Do you feel okay? You’re crying!”

“I feel at peace. I feel so, so happy!” Now that she mentions it, I notice the warmth streaking wetly down my cheeks. I let it flow. Even with you on my back I’ve never felt so light as I do right now. So free and open. “I think, after becoming an alicorn and a princess, I just wasn’t sure of my new role and my new body. I didn’t feel at home in it anymore, or in my place in the world. Suddenly, it wasn’t me, Twilight, a magic dork, it was me Twilight and a pegasus and alicorn magic and an earthpony all wrapped up to be a princess. I guess it took a long time for me to realize it. But now, well, I feel better. I feel whole. And I still don’t feel like a princess, but I know it’s doable now. I can do this now.”

You squeeze me again, and smush your muzzle against the side of my head to whisper, “I’m so glad you found what you were looking for.”

I flicker my head back at you as best as I can, “It’s thanks to you. We have a lot to talk about.”

You focus your energy on hugging me and snuggling my long neck while we walk. Things look different now that I’m taller. But they feel real again, even with the unusual angle everything is at now. “I found my purpose,” I say to the girls. “I’m going to manage relations between Equestria and all the other nations that we’ve started to befriend. I don’t know exactly how to do it, I have a lot of reading to do now, but I’m going to do it. I’m going to bring friendship to everyone I can.”

“Wow Twilight,” Spike says, running alongside me. “Are you going to do it with the dragons too?”

“Of course! And I would love your help with that, Spike.”

“But what happened in there?” Starlight asks. She’s close to my side suddenly, and looks more terrified than the rest.

“I met the Queen. And she euthanized the old me so I could grow.”

“What?!” Most of them yell. I feel you tense up over my back, but I just laugh again. Everything is gloriously okay now. Even thinking about the halo spell in the back of my mind, my head is clear at last. And these tears are so refreshing.

I describe what happened to me, how the Queen inhabits a world above ours, how she sent me on for just a few moments, how she’s taking care of us right now. Rarity nearly faints when I tell her she was completely bald.

We hit the sparse clearing around your hut, and I sit down to let you climb off. I want to keep you on my back, to let you just hug on me all day, but it’s not exactly practical right now. You kiss me on my ear and wipe some of the water off my face before you walk past to open the door and let us in.

Inside, you pull out more cushions and put a large kettle on for tea. Then you sit next to me, and bring your flank up to mine. It fills my whole leg with warmth; tingles up the base of my spine and throws me into another giggle fit.

We talk more. Starlight slowly grows less anxious as you grow more anxious. After a half hour explaining everything and answering questions, I turn to you. You lift your head up to look me in the eyes. That beautiful face fills my vision and I can feel your breath on my nose.

“Zecora, would you like to say something as well?”

You bite your lip. Then turn back to the rest of the group. I pull my wing out and put it over your back. You speak, “There is something I would like to say, to everypony here today. I have for all this time, spoken only in rhyme...”

You tell your whole story, everything you told me. They can feel how nervous you are; that something big is coming.

And then you dwindle down to your last lines, “And that is why I think it’s time that I stop speaking in ...verse. I hope you all will understand.”

“Aw shucks, sugarcube, you don’t have to rhyme when you talk for us to like you!” Applejack beams at you. “I think your voice sounds right pretty in normal speak anyway.”

“Yeah, Zecora,” Fluttershy says, “You don’t have to rhyme if you don’t want to.”

“Eeeeeeeeee!” Pinkie jumps up and tackles you out of my wing. “I love it! We have another party to throw!” From under her crushing hug, you look up at me.

And grin as the tears roll down from both of us.

Author's Notes:

TL;DR -- I hope everything made since, here's a cool link, and thank you so much for reading!

Well, this is it. I'm going to ramble for a bit on my thoughts of the story, just because I always like to see what other authors think about their work.

I'm pretty happy with how it turned out, I think. My default perspective is third person past-tense, so a mix of second and first person in present tense is about as far away from that as I can get. I feel like I never got into Twilight's head quite all the way, but I do enjoy the interplay between the "I" and the "you". And yeah, Twicora is an odd pairing but I really like it.

I hope the ending was satisfying, I know the big climax was basically just a conversation. And I hope the whole thing with the halos made sense, it's her new power to kind of see what ponies are like, what their personality is, so she knows who they might be good friends with.

I was going to write an epilogue where Twilight talks to Luna and then brings up her plans for fostering friendship between nations, but it would have just been more conversations and I figure I'll just save it for a sequel (if I write one). I really like the magic system I came up with, and I plan on using it in original work later on. It came from me thinking about that one scene where zecroa slides her hoof over her empty cup and then it's magically refilled. How did she do this? So it came from world building essentially, and I really like exploring the MLP world. So if there is a sequal, it will definitely do more world building, about the Queen and Twilight's power, and the Zebras. I've also already got 3,000 words written exploring Twilight and Zecora's relationship, but I probably will keep it a separate thing from the one that focuses on world building.

The word "ujasiri" is Swahili for courage and bravery. I chose Swahili because it is the most spoken language in the Bantu region of Africa, and most of the zebras alive today are around that area.

Twilight's experience was inspired directly by the stories of near death experiences collected by the Near Death Experience Research Foundation. The overall plot was inspired by "The River of Dreams" by Billy Joel, which was one of the first songs that made me interested in music.

I think that's it. Thank you so much for reading the story! All comments are appreciated!